THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505200002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 34 lines
The newsless Virginian-Pilot of several recent Sundays is reflective of the dying of one of Virginia's greatest newspapers.
When your editor's publicly stated goal is a ``holy grail'' search for racial diversity reflecting Hampton Roads' population, I read, ``If I only had more Asians, more Africans, more Mexicans, etc., I could put out a good newspaper.''
I think this is nothing more than an excuse for incompetence and mismanagement. Instead of trying to set a social agenda for the area, The Virginian-Pilot should return to the era of quality product. Perfect your craft, use existing personnel, whose quality of reporting has been misused and misplaced, to put out a great paper. If you think more of any race is going to solve the problems with your newspaper, then you just don't get it.
Leave Cole Campbell writing stories about hamburger joints on the Navy base (``That'll be 3,000 quarter-pounders,'' April 2), but let's get the talented excellence of staffers like Dave Addis and Kerry Dougherty back on reporting news instead of writing trivia on sniffing perfumes and the cost of children's clothing. To your editor, this may be ``Real Life,'' but it ain't the real world.
JIMMIE S. FANT
Virginia Beach, May 17, 1995 by CNB