Re. Doug Cortezʻs Letter to the Editor
You’re very correct, Doug! A real newspaper would, indeed, run editorials but The Indy — as the previous editor called it — is “a marketplace of ideas,” not a real newspaper.
I would describe it as more of a thin wrapper of “events-around-town,” school sports and the occasional local issue that surrounds the very substantial weekly real estate insert.
It isn’t subscriber supported. You can see how it literally can’t afford to be a real newspaper. God forbid that it alienate any of its real (estate) audience.
This doesn’t prevent The Indy from exercising a lot of unconscious bias in what it does cover, however. There are, you might have noticed, a preponderance of male opinion columnists who hold forth, often on a weekly basis in rather poorly written fashion, on their hobbyhorses of choice. Mostly they’re “agin it.” Whatever ”it” is. This means that their concerns are given a lot of prominence. I generally disagree with their issues and their conclusions. And, btw, The Indy, does not fact-check anything in these columns. I asked.
And I note that once again last week as always, any time that Deborah Laughton, Ph.D., writes a Letter to the Editor, her name is followed by an “Editorʻs Note” identifying her as the spouse of a Councilman as though her opinion could not possibly be considered in any way worthy of consideration for what it says.
Let’s hope that the advent of a woman at the helm of The Indy will make a difference.
But I urge you to continue to look to the the LA Times, The Pilot, and The Register for actual journalism.
Kiku Terasaki, Laguna Beach
(Thank you for your opinion. We hope you continue to support local journalism. – Ed.)
While it’s kind of the letter writer to grace me with an honorary PhD, it’s my authors who have them. I only have an undergrad degree and 40-years’ experience as an acquisitions editor and publisher of research methods and statistics books at (mostly) the graduate level. In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that Daniel Langhorne, the Indy’s past editor, was kind enough to warn me in advance about the “spouse” by-line, which I never use in my profession or professional writing since I’ve been a publisher longer than I’ve been married. It seems some of the commercial development types and tourist businesses in our community were insisting that my marital status be included on every letter. I asked that if my marital status had to be included then my professional status had to be, too, so Daniel was kind enough to include both. And, yes, I’m aware that “the guys” don’t seem to have to do this, or even admit what their primary businesses are. (The old boys game at play).
As a columnist, I can state that columns are HEAVILY fact/checked