It’s highly unusual that you see an editor of the Letters section on a newspaper’s opinion page provide a defense or explanation in response to letter writers. But in the case of responses to News & Observer columnist Ruth Sheehan’s piece on Wake County Commissioner Paul Coble, it has now happened twice — once to Coble’s own letter. That editor must have a soft spot for her, feeling like she can’t defend herself. After today’s letter the N&O section editor explains by regurgitating from Sheehan’s column on Coble:
Coble said he will address issues such as the bond referendums
publicly, at the appropriate time. I hope he does. Coble may not owe me
an explanation. But I dare say he owes the taxpayers.
For Sheehan to say Coble “may not owe me an explanation” followed by saying “he owes the taxpayers” is a tacit way of saying he does owe her an explanation. She as much as said so in her column from nearly two weeks ago:
He will not return my calls. There have been dozens.
For awhile this year, I kept a tally of my attempts.
Then I just started calling hit or miss. From home, from work, from my cell. Early in the morning, at lunchtime, midafternoon.
Sometimes
my messages were short. Sometimes I was chatty Cathy: “Paul Coble, I
know you are not avoiding me! Please give me a call. I’ve been trying
to get up with you. …”I sent him e-mail.
I even called another former mayor, Tom Fetzer, Coble’s predecessor, for an assist.
Although
I felt like I was back in grade school, asking one boy to tell another
boy I wanted to talk to him, Fetzer courteously agreed to pass on the
message.Still no luck.
Is there anything tackier than a newspaper writer who spills about his or her failed efforts to get an interview? I thought it was considered a journalistic no-no. It just sounds like a lot of whining. Typically the practice is to note in your article your failed attempts to get a comment from a public figure, then move on with your story. But a whole column about it? Amateurish in my opinion.
But if this is a new approach that The N&O plans to take, I look forward to the full accounting from their columnists and reporters about the brush-offs they’ve received from Gov. Mike Easley over the last eight years.
