I knew the transition from having Rosemary Otzman as editor to me taking over as managing editor would be a challenge, and it has been. But, what has surprised me the most is how tricky some of the “little” things are.
For example, it’s possible I owe a couple of community members an apology for failing to print an upcoming birthday. We have been short-staffed, and I didn’t know exactly how we handled those, so it’s possible some didn’t make it in.
Even though the birthday listings only take up an inch or two in each paper, they aren’t “little” to the birthday boy or girl and their families, so I apologize if any of these slipped through the cracks. If this happened to you, please call or email and we’ll reprint a “belated birthday” with an apology in a future issue.
Speaking of “little,” we had a complaint about the size of the font in the crime logs/police blotters. What happened is that the former editor, for quite some time, has been running them in 8-point font, which is quite small.
The first week I published a paper as managing editor, we increased the font, and then we took it back down to the original size the week afterward. We received a complaint by phone that we’d made the font smaller, but we really hadn’t – aside from that one week, they’re running at the same size they always have.
We also had a suggestion that I return to posting the total number of traffic stops and property checks. I had left them out and just put in a line that “this log also contained property checks and traffic stops” but I’ve added the number of those back in now.
The biggest issue with the police dispatch logs is that people have a very divided opinion about them. Some readers really want them to remain. I’ve been told, “I always look at those,” and, “I think people moving to a new area should know where the crime happens.”
On the other hand, I’ve had three or four people say they don’t like seeing so much crime in the paper and they’d prefer we print more stories about high school sports and photos of children doing activities and get rid of the police logs altogether.
One option I’ve considered is just printing the first day of police logs for each municipality, and then posting the full logs on our website, but I know that some older readers would prefer to read them in the paper rather than go looking for them online.
I always invite readers to write me letters to the editor on any topic, but I’m especially eager to hear from our readership how you feel about those police logs – stay or go? Or some kind of middle ground?
If you want to have a letter printed in our paper, I’m also especially interested in finding out what our local readers think about the following topics:
- Sumpter Township politics, both trustees and planning commission.
- The proposed data center in Van Buren Township.
- How you think our local schools are doing and what could be improved.
- Anything else that you think we should be covering but that we might not already know about!