THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507290018
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: C5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Welcome to the dog days of summer! Appropriately, readers have been hot under the collar about the newspaper - and filled with warmth. Here's a potpourri, with answers, when I have them.
Gripe: Sizzling only in Norfolk? Tuesday's headline proclaimed, ``Norfolk sizzles with record high: 99.'' An anonymous Virginia Beach resident sizzled. ``I don't live in Norfolk,'' she said, ``and I was just wondering, was it warm in Virginia Beach? In Chesapeake? Or is this only the Norfolk newspaper?''
Technically, we could say Norfolk, since that's where official temperature readings are made. But we probably should have said ``Area sizzles. . . '' (``Hampton Roads'' is just too long for the average headline.)
Praise: Prize-winning ponies. Alfred Morgan loved photographer Vicki Cronis' 7/25) color photo of the Assateague Island wild pony roundup on the Tuesday MetroNews front.
``This ought to be an award-winning photo,'' said Morgan, who also threw in an entrepreneurial idea: Cronis should sell prints at the pony roundup.
By the way, Cronis is a summer intern, a graduate student from Ohio University.
Question: Why Burma? A reader noticed wire stories referring to Burma. But issn't it now Myanmar?
Burma has not changed its name, says Thomas Kent, international editor of the Associated Press. The Burmese word for the Southeast Asian country sounds more like Myanmar, he said, and the government would prefer that transliteration.
``We're trying to use terminology most familiar to readers,'' said Kent. ``If Myanmar becomes more widely used, we're not against an eventual change. We did change Peking to Beijing.''
Praise: RX for success. Tuesday's Daily Break story ``Family Doctor,'' about James Dobson's Christian-oriented family radio show, was a hit with more than a dozen readers. ``It was good to see something so positive in the paper,'' was a typical response.
Joanne Sieloff of Virginia Beach also gave a thumbs up to a July 19 story on Christian musicians, ``Rock the Flock.'' Sieloff had complained not long ago that the paper writes too much on ``weird little sub-cults of Christians.''
Gripe: Too few ``Funkys.'' Jeb Raitt of Norfolk finds it annoying that the comic strip ``Funky Winkerbean'' appears Sundays only.
``It's like being allowed to read every 20th page of a dime novel. Very frustrating,'' he said. ``If you're not going to run it on weekdays, you might as well drop it Sundays.'' Of course, he'd prefer a seven-day Funky.
Praise: By George! George Tucker's column about the 9 o'clock gun booming over the Elizabeth River's inner harbor, in last Sunday's Commentary, brought back fond memories to Marguerite Marx of Virginia Beach. In fact, Marx enjoys all of Tucker's columns.
``His style of writing appeals to me. He doesn't try to see how many long words he can include that will puzzle the reader.''
Gripe: Reviews too revealing. Charlie Conover, who teaches English at Great Bridge High in Chesapeake, said he's been reading our movie reviews for 12 years and has a persistent complaint: They give away too much of the movie.
Example: a review of ``Clueless,'' he said, clued him in on too many of the punch lines.
Gripe: Commentary buried. Helen Sanders of Chesapeake loves her Sunday Commentary section but laments that it ``always seems lost in the car ads.''
That's because of the size of the section. Production Director Warren Skipper says the presses run more efficiently when a smaller section is inside a larger one - and the Classified section is bigger.
Wanted: missing type!! Numerous readers have been frustrated by missing chunks of type - lines either lopped off the bottom of a page or missing between the first segment of a story and its continuation.
The problems are human and computer. But as long as they persist, look for the missing text in a follow-up correction.
by CNB