THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408060015
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
After church, waiting for his son and daughter to get out of Sunday School, Bob Mandigo of Virginia Beach likes to sit in his Dodge Caravan and read the Sunday paper. But one thing drives him nuts.
Just when he's getting to the good part of a story, there's a line telling him that the rest is on page A14. And where is the darn page? It's in a separate section because on Sundays, the A section is split into two parts.
``It's really awkward to go from the front page to another section,'' said Mandigo. Several other callers echoed his sentiments.
I've heard this gripe before but more so last weekend. That Sunday, two particularly interesting stories continued out of the section - one on the escape of convicted murderer Thomas Lee Bonney, the other on a man who believes he lost his job for battling bigotry.
``It isn't the first time this has happened,'' steamed Jennifer Woodard of Virginia Beach, who never did find her page A14. ``It's very annoying to be sitting here reading the paper and having this happen to my stories.''
Well, readers aren't the only ones annoyed.
``We don't like it either,'' said news editor Pamela Smith-Rodden, when I asked her to explain why stories can't always ``jump'' (newsroom lingo) into the same section.
``We always put a priority on jumping to the first A-section,'' said Smith-Rodden. ``But because of press and ad constraints, it often is impossible to get the space we need in the first section.''
Translation: Until someone comes up with a better solution, you'd better keep those two A sections together on Sundays.
The view from Ocean View. Community officials and activists are never happy when the newspaper appears to highlight the ``other'' point of view, whether the subject is the Lake Gaston pipeline to Virginia Beach or the school system in Portsmouth. And I've found Ocean View civic leaders to be particularly protective of their turf.
So I was a bit skeptical when Wayne Brown, active in the Ocean View community, and Robert Soble, his downtown Norfolk counterpart, complained about a front-page story that ran last month. The headline: ``Seven Ocean View patriots start petition to secede from Norfolk.''
Their complaints: Only one of the seven ``patriots'' is identified in the July 2 story - Michael Bond, organizer of the secession effort. Plus, as the story clearly notes, not a single petition was yet in hand.
This ``crackpot idea gets front-page coverage and we can't even get a story in the paper about the Ocean View Beach Festival,'' Brown said. ``If this is any movement at all, it's because the paper has created it.''
Well, secession stories make quirky reading - the movement to cut off Staten Island from New York City was a cover story not long ago in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
But for a front-page story, the Ocean View coverage is pretty vague on numbers. It talks about ``residents in Ocean View. . . plotting revenge.'' How many residents - seven? twenty-seven? hundreds? The story never says.
Councilman Randy Wright gets his say, blasting the secession idea as ``sour grapes'' and ``ludicrous,'' but his disclaimers are in the continuation of the story. Not all readers make it that far.
But most of all, putting the article on the front page gave it a weight that the issue didn't merit - at least not while the who-what-when was still so vague.
The pro-secession side is also annoyed with the newspaper, so maybe that evens things out.
Bruce Sachs complained that Thursday's Compass editorial cartoon, ``Ocean View Tea Party,'' made the secession movement seem like ``a silly little thing.'' He was also unhappy that the newspaper hadn't covered a small protest he led on Wednesday.
Said Sachs: ``You're trivializing a very serious effort.''
Federal retirees flap. More than a dozen federal retirees griped because the newspaper failed to cover a July 27 meeting in Virginia Beach about applying for their long-awaited state tax refunds.
This is a hot topic among the retirees, many of whom live in this area. I couldn't offer much of a defense. Apparently we didn't have a reporter handy; and no reporter means no story. (It wasn't, as one caller charged, because we ran out of ink!)
On Monday I was puzzled when several retirees called back to thank us for providing details of the tax settlement. Had I missed a story?
Nope, it was a full-page ad placed by the Virginia Department of Taxation. So thank the Commonwealth this time.
Much-needed chuckle. I'd like to give the last laugh to Kathern Moore.
Mrs. Moore is 80 and lives in the Beth Sholom Sands senior apartments in Virginia Beach. She wishes we'd put the Chuckle and weather back on the front page. Both are currently in the index box on A2.
Senior citizens have a harder time finding it now, she said. Besides, she added, ``We'd like it on the front page where we can have a little laugh before we get to the bad news.'' MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net. by CNB