After writing yesterday’s post, I remembered a letter to the editor a couple months ago ridiculing my apparent “myopia”. They were objecting to my concerns that Council was missing a great opportunity to support its heritage initiatives and draft Tourism Strategy. The writer said that it was such a minor issue considering the massive changes taking place in the City, that I should be ashamed for expending so much time and energy on it.
So, somehow, he got the idea that the newspaper editor’s decision on what stories to publish is some kind of reflection of how I spend my time and energy. Of course, I don’t edit the newspaper and I don’t get to choose the stories. If I could, there would be a much different mix of topics covered. Instead, they get to take a 30 second comment about a bronze plaque and make a news story out of it — doesn’t matter that I spoke at length on other more important issues, nor does it matter that it’s not something I spent any time working on — they obviously thought it was an interesting statement and printed an article about it.
The newspaper has no mandate to reflect my priorities. The amount of ink they dedicate to an issue has absolutely no correlation to how much time or energy I’ve dedicated to it.
I wonder if, perhaps, the myopia detected by the letter writer is actually his own, depending on a newspaper lens to interpret his world. Appears to me that he didn’t want to see past his anxiety about changes in the town centre and was simply looking for an opportunity to vent.
I hope he feels better, though I wish he could have found a more constructive way to help himself feel better.