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By MaryHelenSwanson
People make mistakes. I, as editor of the Post Review, make mistakes.
In looking back in our volumes here in the office, that date back to the late 1800s, I see many mistakes. Some had been noted and corrected, other mistakes went unnoticed. I know of one mistake from the 1950s that wasn’t corrected until a year ago.
If we can say the editors who put together the papers of the last 13 plus decades made those mistakes because they were human, then I ask you to please accept that this editor is also human.
When human beings work 10-12 hour days for several days in a row, they get tired and that’s when mistakes are made. And we truly regret them. At least I do.
However, once made, especially in a newspaper, the only thing I can do is apologize. Unfortunately, it’s too late and it has to come one week after the fact.
That being said, I now apologize for the front page error where I, early in the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 5, put a picture of the third highest vote getter along with the winners of the North Branch city council election.
I’m sorry.
I would have put Larry Erickson’s photo on the page too, though, as he was one of the winners, which was noted, but I didn’t have a photo. I asked candidates to send in a photo when we prepared the voters’ guide or come in and get one taken. He did not respond ... and that’s OK because we don’t vote for a person on what he or she looks like anyway, do we?
I realize that with Amy Oehlers being elected mayor, her council seat will be vacant. I was not presuming to direct the city as to whom should fill that seat. I do know there will be a proper process for finding her replacement.
It’s just that when I got the call from the city with the results, I received the top three vote getters and being the hour that it was, and that I was pretty exhausted by that time, made the front page mistake.
That’s the reason, it’s not an excuse, it’s the reason.
While I’m explaining my human foibles, I think I’ll also explain something about our police report.
When I first started as editor in 1999, the Post Review was not including this information. In trying to improve the paper and balance the content, while providing my readers with important information, I added the police report the same as many other publications do.
Quite truthfully, I liked it better when I didn’t have to include it, but all of the information we disseminate on page 9 is public information.
I know, some of you will say, “Why do you have to make it public?”
Well, there are things in that report that you should know. For instance, there will be weeks when you can find a rash of car thefts or home break-ins. Or seemingly less important, a rash of mail box smashings or snowboard thefts.
Now, what purpose do you think there is in reporting this?
It’s to alert you to what’s happening in your neighborhood. Even the mailbox issue should be taken seriously. Sometimes bottle bombs have been placed in rural mailboxes, so if we tell you that someone is smashing or tampering with a lot of mailboxes, which by the way is a federal offense, you might be more cognizant of what’s going on at the end of your driveway.
Even after all the notices about the stolen snowboards, yet more get stolen. So if you were to read our report you might think more carefully about watching yours when you go to the slopes. I hear those boards are expensive.
The difficult part, of course, comes when we report about police calls to homes for suspected incidents. Sometimes they are real, many times they are unfounded. I know people get hurt when they see these in the report. It’s not our intention to hurt people.
Then people send me e-mails or call me on the phone or even come in to my office and say to me “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” There is the assumption that somehow I don’t know what they are feeling.
Well, I do. One of the saddest things I’ve had to do is to include a dear family member in this report. But before I did, I consulted my former editor about my options. She’s the one who taught me everything I know about my job and she’s a very credible person. She said the decision to omit my relative’s name was mine, and my readers would never know. And she was right. But she also said that if I kept my relative’s name out of the report, I would have to do the same for others as well if they came in asking not to be included. And if I did that, it would not be fair to all those who did not call me, and although we fail miserably at times, the most important thing in this business next to accuracy is fairness. Or perhaps they’re on the top together. This can be a really tough profession sometimes.
I’m really sorry if you end up in the police report. Just know that the intent is to inform the community about what’s going on in our neighborhoods and we take the information right from the Sheriff and police reports. And remember, the people that know you and care about you most know the truth about you and that’s what really matters.
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