Open Letter to the Times Free Press Managing Editor

Lesson Learned - Brendan Benson (mp3)

J. Todd Foster
Managing Editor
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Chattanooga, TN

September 16, 2010

Dear Mr. Foster,

Welcome back to Chattanooga. Sorry I have to introduce myself under such negative circumstances.

The purpose of this email is to express my frustration with yesterday's story on National Merit Semifinalists. The story mentions 31 students who rank in the top 1 percent of the country -- the whole country! -- on a highly-respected test. These are the NBA lottery picks of the high school academic world. Yet they don't get their names in the paper. They hardly merit much space at all, really.

Almost every school in this city benefits greatly from an entire section dedicated to sports, and I do not mean to be ungrateful for the recognition you give students for accomplishments in that area. However, were a Martian to land in Chattanooga and read your newspaper (I figure if they have spaceships they can probably figure out English), they would have a very difficult time learning what exactly students do in school other than play sports. You occasionally run stories on community service or, once in a while, something like mock trial, but when it comes to the academic experience, and particularly when it comes to the academic "all-stars" of our city, those stories are the proverbial needles in a very large haystack.

If the city of Chattanooga wonders why so many of its best and brightest leave and don't return, it might be wise to start with the very clear indication that the paper offers: we simply don't, as a community, value them. If they can throw, hit, catch, dribble, or chip, they might earn our recognition and adulation. But if they're just smart? If they study hard and prepare for college exceptionally well? That's just not newsworthy to us.

Every varsity sport in this city ends its season with a series of features dominating the back page of your sports section. Full color. Lots of names and pictures. You even do two. One for the citywide kids and another for the kids in the perimeter counties. Every middle school sports team that wins anything gets a picture on the inside pages.

But if you score in the top 1 percent IN THE NATION on what might be one of the most important tests for anyone with ambitions for college? You don't even merit getting your name in the paper.

Sir, if you don't find something disturbing and misguided in this editorial decision, then I suggest you plug up your ears with some golf balls and put a helmet on backwards and just start running into a wall. Geeks don't have to deal with concussion disorders or repeated rehab stints on knees or dislocated joints. They might risk frying their brains, but I'm pretty sure that particular injury rate is minuscule at best. Apparently that makes them less newsworthy.

Perhaps you say, "We give people what they want to read, and our readers don't want to read about nerds. They want to read about sports." If that's your excuse, I recommend that you announce just that in some editorials. Take a stand. Be proud of your decision. In fact, you could start having reporters talk in schools to encourage kids to play more sports and get their stinkin' noses out of books, because what kind of pathetic nerd would study and learn when there's a hoop to aim for, a net to hit over? Stand up and be counted as Anti-Nerd. Most of the Tea Party would vote for you.

You know what would be nicer, though? If anyone with any real influence would get a grip on what's actually important about school and start finding ways to celebrate it. It might take a little bit of extra work. Actual reporting and such. But I bet you could find some smart kids out there and celebrate them in interesting ways.

What is undeniable about school is this: nothing guarantees a better chance of almost anything we define as "success" than a highly-motivated and hard-working STUDENT. Robert J. Samuelson says so and that dude's never wrong! Parents and teachers are powerful influences, but at the heart of academic success is a motivated kid. This isn't rocket science. Yet your paper does almost nothing to address this problem; it merely exacerbates it.

You are the media equivalent of Coke machines and candy bars in a school hallway. Worse, I think you know it but would hate to risk losing a revenue stream.

If I am unfairly crapping on the athlete, you can take the blame for that as well. Your newspaper assists in promoting that inequality, in promoting the superiority and greater value of an athlete over that of mere booksmarts. And when I say "you," I don't mean you, Mr. Foster. I don't even mean The Times Free Press. I mean 95% of newspapers in this entire pathetic country. You're all doing one disservice after another, and it makes it damn hard to mourn you as your ship sinks into the icy waters of financial ruin, because you could've damn well avoided all these icebergs if only you'd been paying attention.

Mr. Foster, you're new to your position as Managing Editor. You don't have to accept this status quo. You can change things. You can address this problem. You probably won't. But I'll hold out a sliver of hope.

Or, in sports terminology, the geeks will need a Hail Mary. Are you Doug Flutie? Or are you Ryan Leaf?

Hope you like our blog! Best to you and yours! Hugs and Kisses!
Billy

Let's Play SCRUPLES!

Always Love - Addison Road (mp3)
Suffering - Satchel (mp3)

Tom Hanley and Lauren McGee got married in an Indianapolis ER. Their wedding party was in a serious car accident mere hours before their scheduled wedding. One of the groomsmen was pronounced dead on the scene. Other members of the wedding party suffered minor injuries. For reasons we might never truly understand, the couple, both in their early 20s, chose to go through with their wedding that evening in the hospital. Instead of a reception, they held a prayer service for their fallen friend.

If you can read that AOL report on these events without getting at least a little bit misty, then bully for you. Damn thing rips me apart. I've read the story at least six or seven times now, and although I don't drench my keyboard with tears, I find myself doing the whole jerky-breathing and sniffly thing.

Before we play Scruples, you need to go read it. Otherwise you won't be emotionally invested enough to play properly. So grab a few Kleenex and read, and then come back after you've collected yourself. Go ahead. The rest of us will wait for you.

(Insert Jeopardy music here)

Scruples. Remember that game? We played it a lot in our church youth group when I was a teenager, and lots of kids in the group would lie their asses off about what they would or wouldn't do. I mean, the "right" answers were usually pretty obvious.

Something about being presented with a highly imperfect, emotionally-charged scenario and having to come down on one side or another of that situation makes for fascinating internal drama and great discussions. So it should be no surprise that a story at The Frisky last week received 42 comments covering the gamut of reactions.

"What should they have done: get married or postpone?"

It probably says more about me than about those who commented that the level and extremity in some of their judgments really bothered me. It probably speaks to my namby-pamby relativist nature that, because I can't possibly know all the details and explanations for their decision to get married in that emergency room, I don't feel comfortable saying whether it was right or wrong.

Maybe that dead groomsman's parents told them to get married because that's what he would have wanted. Or maybe they knew that, no matter how long they postponed their wedding, the day would always carry that very heavy cloud of tragedy and sadness, that the only way out was through. Maybe they were in shock. Maybe... Lots of maybes. Few facts.

I've got plenty of theories. They involve the circle of life, and symmetry, and sex, and friendship. And all of those theories say that what they did, getting married in the ER like that, had to be damn near impossible to pull off, but it was the best of the pathetic and awful options.

How horrifying, if they postponed that wedding, and then one of them went through some serious level of guilt or panic or whatever, and next thing you know, they break off their engagement? Next thing you know, they wake up and realize their good friend died in a car crash for two people who never even ended up getting married. Perhaps it's selfish, but such a chain of events would destroy me. It would f*** my psychological shizznat all up in ways I'd be afraid I might never recover.

So here's to emergency room weddings. And here's to hoping none of y'all and no one you know or love ever has to contemplate that option.

My Kind of Morning

Some Jingle Jangle Morning - Mary Lou Lord (mp3)
You Talk - Babyshambles (mp3)

If it hasn't been stated enough on here, I despise the Today show. The level of unstable explosive emotion I reserve for that show is well beyond any reasonable amount, to the point that it kinda feels Hinkley-esque. (Don't worry, Matt. You're safe. I don't do weapons.)

Conservatives can shout all day long about Today being a bastion of left-wing ideology because all great political (and religious) movements need clearly-defined and two-dimensional bad guys. We need our enemies to be simple and consistent. Liberals like me demonize the super-wealthy CEO and the mind-controlling megapreacher in much the same way the right paints "The Media" and government oversight.

What angers me is that Today is no more a flagship for liberal politics than my johnson is a flagship for women's liberation. In the past decade, the show has gradually shifted from an entertaining and very superficial look at news mixed in with massive doses of pop culture, to a show completely centered in the Wow Moment. Matt and Meredith cover one and only one thing: The Rubberneck Du Jour.

Whatever topic is most likely to catch your eye, arouse your prurient interests, keep you from touching that damn dial, then that's the topic they cover. And, to no one's surprise, actual news and actual politics don't keep enough people giving a shit. The Olympics. Snow. Ways to pinch a penny at the mall. The latest big-name adulterous male. This is as close to news as you're gonna get for more than a minute per hour.

The only kind of actual news Today covers is the kind they can't escape. When the World Trade Center collapses, for example. Or when a former beauty queen becomes the face of the Republican Party.

I don't remember who finally had enough of my complaining to push me into giving Morning Joe on MSNBC a chance. For certain I had stumbled across several positive articles about the show, but someone told me to give it a try.

A year later, it is undoubtedly one of only three programs permitted the enter my universe of attention in the morning (the other two are NPR and SportsCenter). If you need to know why, it comes down to Mika Brezezinski's Three No's: “No cooking, no lingerie, no missing girls.”

The show involves a large table where former Rep. Joe Scarborough, the slightly right-leaning friendly blowhard, and Mika, the demure brainy slightly left-leaning librarian MILF, play symbolic parents to the breakfast nook. Their "children" change every day, but it's always a bevy of media types, politicians and talking heads. The show is fresh and modestly paced and mixes heavy talk with an often light heart, reminding us that we can all really get along, and none of these issues are worth walking away from the table over.

Don't worry. I get it. I know why one show is on a major network and the other is stuck on a meaningless cable channel. I realize our country is made up more of people who don't give a shit about what's happening to anything beyond their own water cooler and paycheck than it is of people who want to feel connected, involved and informed. Truth hurts, but I get it.

I'm just saying that, without Morning Joe, I would be incapable of holding onto my hope that important people of differing political persuasions can sit down together and talk calmly about things that matter. And what's especially refreshing is how free from dogma most of the guests seem to be. Even Pat Buchanan, who's plenty dogmatic, seems to be capable of enjoying a friendly debate without the yelling and finger-pointing that happens on other similar shows.

And that's all I really want out of my morning. Non-explosive, mentally stimulating talk about actual honest-to-God news. A brief look at the state of our union with commentary from people with whom I don't always have to agree. With no cooking, lingerie, or missing girls.

Well, and coffee.