The New Era has a pressing problem, an insidious bias that compromises its journalistic integrity. Yes, this paper has printed slanted stories.
While probably most papers leaned in favor of The Messiah during the last election, our editorial page clearly opposed The Messiah for a variety of reasons based on what The Messiah promised us during his campaign for president. (Don’t worry lefties, we didn’t articulate it, but the editorial staff were not big fans of John McCain’s socialistic leanings either, and we had mixed opinions about Sarah Palin. They just didn’t win, so we didn’t pick on them.)
But that stuff appeared where it belonged, on the opinion pages. Our news pages were a far different story, and I don’t think we had any real issues there.
Our problem is more sinister than conservative and liberal media biases. This is a life-and-death issue.
The New Era is clearly pro-snow, and that can be dangerous.
I offer as proof the Dec. 24 headline and the lead paragraph. The headline said, “Humbug Weather.”
Since my editor, Scott, wrote that headline, he is clearly biased. His objectivity was clouded, at best. Those words suggest that he was disappointed with the result of the snowstorm before Christmas, which wound up being mostly rain and warmer weather.
When I got trapped in Salem under 8 inches of snow covering an inch of pure ice during that storm, he wasn’t most angry at me for not getting to work on a Monday. He and the rest of the office were most upset that I got to have a real snowstorm.
Yes, Scott is clearly a proponent of snow, and he allowed his bias to show in the headlines.
But the writer of that story, me, was no better. The story opens with the words, “The promise of snow….”
It cannot be a “promise,” with that positive-sounding connotation and tone, if a journalist is to remain objective. So, I am complicit in the snow bias that’s taken hold on our office.
With that, I feel we must apologize and from now on remove the last vestiges of any conversational or colorful words from snow stories. We may have to limit ourselves to simple declarative, objective utterances such as: “Snow fell – didn’t stick.”
We’ll leave the fun in the snow to the people we cover and photograph.
Next time I take a photo of someone having fun in the snow, I will do everything I can to keep my expression in a neutral frown so as not to betray any hint of my internal bias – to pretend that I am completely indifferent to the snow.
I call on Scott to do the same the next time he writes a headline about snow.
In any case, now that I’ve successfully pulled it off, I thought I’d share how to capitalize on nearby snowstorms and get out of going to work. In a spirit of responsibility, I must caution you to avoid trying this if you can’t pull it off perfectly.
First step is to listen to a bogus weather report, one that says if you travel out of town on Saturday, even if it freezes that night, it’ll melt Sunday and you’ll be able to get home safely to return to work on Monday.
Make sure the incoming storm will be spectacular and also have a vehicle that is completely and utterly incapable of traveling in the snow – not just unsafely but completely incapable of making it 50 feet without spinning out and bouncing off a curb and parked cars.
I recommend a rear-wheel-drive sports car with wide, low-profile tires that haven’t been siped. Get rid of any other vehicles you own so you have that excuse. You can get a car so truly bad in the ice and snow that, with just an inch or two of snow, you can’t make your way along North River Drive and have to call the boss to push against your car while you turn it around to keep from sliding sideways into a ditch.
Make sure that car is bad enough that when other traffic is perfectly OK traveling at 55 or 65 mph on Highway 20, you will spin out on any unexpected patch of black ice, crossing all four lanes of traffic, while driving approximately 30 mph.
You don’t believe me? You want to give me the usual spiel my friends do: “You just don’t know how to drive in the snow,” or “pretend there’s an egg between your foot and the gas pedal.”
Condescending jerks. Here are my keys. Give it a shot if you want to prove your point, but I get your rig if you break mine and you fix mine for me. Never mind that I ‘ve managed to drive fine on snow and ice in every other car I’ve owned from the age of 16.
If your vehicle gets that bad, you have what it takes to shirk work.
Secondly, get a job you can’t do long distance. Unfortunately, while trapped in Salem, I could do much of my work by phone and Internet. I ended up putting in five hours that Monday despite the fact that the big four-wheel drive SUVs were sliding into ditches and snowmobiles were the primary means of getting around in the area.
You laugh? I have proof. I have photos.
Which brings me to the third point. If you get trapped like that, take photos. Make sure your employer can visualize your predicament when he’s enjoying much warmer, rainy weather living in the Sweet Home Banana Belt.
Most importantly, it’s won-derful to remember that Sweet Home is usually more pleasant than anywhere else. If you looked outside Monday afternoon, you might have noticed the ring of clouds sitting on top of the ridges surrounding Sweet Home as the sun beat down on us with temperatures close to 60.
I called a buddy who lives between Salem and Silverton, where I stayed during the snowstorm, and asked him what the weather was like: Foggy, and he couldn’t see the road from his house. Or was that out on Berlin Road?