THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512220006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
'Twas the day before Christmas and all through the news
Not a story was offensive or ridiculed views.
The front page was laid out with scrupulous care
In hopes that you'd judge us both accurate and fair. . .
DEAR SANTA: Every day of the year, readers make their wishes and woes - usually the latter - clear to the public editor's office. As we did last year, we decided to share that list with you.
I don't agree with all these requests, but they're the ones I heard most in 1995. And some sound an awful lot like the ones from '94 and '93. I guess we never stop trying.
So here's the wish list from readers of The Virginian-Pilot. Sure, they're a bit critical. But when it comes to listing what's naughty and nice, newspaper readers are much quicker to pick on the naughty.
Quit tampering with the green sheet. First you took away our daily, weekday TV listings and gave us an incomplete grid. Then you replaced the grid with that long, five-day listing. Enough already!
Defend the victim, not the victimizer. Convicted murderer Dennis Stockton got to write his Death Row diary this year, but what about his victim? What about all the victims? We're tired of reading about how the inmates are always innocent.
There's more to sports than football. Give us more coverage of the Admirals, NASCAR, America's Cup, our daughter's swim team. Don't poke too much fun at the Redskins. And, please, give us the right TV times and stations so we don't have all the guys over for the wrong game.
Keep up the election coverage! Those voter guides in November were a big help for off-year elections. And we appreciate the emphasis on campaign issues. Give us the same, perhaps even earlier, in 1996.
Brush up on your grammar and your spelling. There's a difference between ``it's'' and ``its,'' between ``compliment'' and ``complement.'' And stop using slang, like ``Where it's at.'' How can we teach our children to use proper English when you don't?
Proofread your newspaper. Then, if you do make errors, at least someone will catch them!
Get your Navy terms right. We expect the folks in Oshkosh to confuse a carrier with a canoe, but y'all should know better. If you don't, ask one of the many military folks and retirees who live here.
Don't mess up our puzzles - especially not the Sunday crossword. You ruined my whole day last Sunday, putting the answers in some grids and leaving out the numbers in others. How can I start my day that way?
Help us to help others. The story this month about the Smithfield woman whose house was vandalized drew an outpouring of help from readers. We don't like bad news, but we do value stories that allow us to reach out and help.
Show respect to the elderly. You didn't need to run that photo of the woman with Alzheimer's, the one that showed her bare-legged and in diapers. That's taking away her dignity.
Show respect to your community. How dare you let your teen writers put down the city of Franklin? It didn't deserve to be called a ``mecca of boredom.'' Don't pick on Portsmouth, either. And stop referring to Chesapeake Beach as Chick's Beach.
Put real news on the front page, like Bosnia and the federal budget impasse. A1 isn't the place for diaries about Death Row and Navy deployment, or sagas about sex and O.J.'s love life.
Give us a complete newspaper - one that doesn't have wrinkles or poor inking or missing sections. We want to read every word!
Keep up the Pilot Online service. This is a new wish from cyberspace junkies. ``We enjoy keeping up with the news from back home,'' is what I'm hearing from Hampton Roads transplants.
Answer your phones! We get tired of hearing voice mail when we want to change a subscription or place a classified ad or call the public editor. We want to speak to a human!
Learn the difference between Garth Brooks and John Michael Montgomery. And between concrete and cement (the latter is an ingredient of the former). We got lots of calls on both those mix-ups - the first with a country music story last month, the other in an account of the jail annex collapse back in July.
Give us stock quotes we can read. The type is too small, especially for older readers - i.e. anyone over 30.
Don't editorialize on the news pages. This is a perennial request, one that invariably begins, ``Why do you always make the Republicans look bad?'' and concludes, ``Leave political commentary for the editorial pages.''
There's the list, Santa. And here's one of my own: a happy holiday season to all our readers. MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net by CNB