Sometimes it seems I spend half my time fixing toilet paper. Nobody around
here hangs it properly, with the paper rolling away from the wall. Instead,
everybody hangs it with the paper rolling toward the wall, which makes no sense
whatsoever — at least that’s my opinion.
Another problem is double doors. There must be some city ordinance declaring that one side must always be locked — specifically, the side that was open last week. But what’s the use of having two doors if one is as unyielding as a wall? And why keep switching back and forth? I think that’s rude — but, again, that’s just me.
I also believe that too many Springfield women are called Barb. I know approximately 73 Barbs, most of whom are lovely ladies and none of whom deserves such a crudely butchered name. Why not just call them Barbara? That sounds so much prettier — at least it does to me.
You don’t have to agree with any of these ideas. They’re not facts. They’re just my opinions. And they’re certainly not news. Yet I can say all these things anyway simply because Fresh Ink is not news, it’s a personal column. It’s the place where I can opine, whine, predict, prognosticate, conjecture, or just plain complain. It’s the one place I can type with my bare hands instead of my usual kid gloves.
Of course, you probably knew that already, because if you’re like most Illinois Times readers, you’ve been picking up this paper religiously for several years and you know how it goes. Plus, you have at least one college degree, you’re old enough to remember life before Mark Hyman, and your IQ is 130 or higher.
OK, I just made up the thing about the IQ. But the rest of it is gospel, according to Media Audit (which also tells me that most of you garden regularly and consume bottled water — good for you!).
To me, these data imply that you are smarter than the average bear and therefore probably know a little something about how to read a newspaper.
But not everybody gets it. Apparently some people think that a column is the same thing as a “news story,” into which my personal opinion has no right to intrude.
To alleviate this confusion, let me point out some clues: The most obvious is my picture — a sure sign that the words flowing beside and under it constitute not a news story but a column. It’s a long tradition in the journalism business, and it’s true of almost every newspaper, not just this one.
Next comes the tone. When the article is written in the first person (that means frequent use of the word “I”), odds are, it’s a column.
Then there’s the content. When the writer waxes on about her kids or her mother or how she gossiped with a City Council member, it’s not a news story. It’s a column!
Furthermore, the only other items on this page are Jim Hightower’s personal (opinion) column and a political cartoon. As you can see by our table of contents (conveniently located on the facing page), all three items are listed under the heading “Commentary.” Therefore, this page is where we enjoy the freedom — maybe even the duty — to express our opinions, to lay our cards out on the table, to say what we mean, and to mean what we say.
Sound easy? Try it sometime. It’s not the same as phoning a radio show, where you don’t have to identify yourself and your opinion evaporates within seconds. Laying it out in permanent ink with your name and face is frightening.
As a precaution, before I let my opinions fly, I usually try to build a launch pad of traditionally reported facts. Maybe that’s where the confusion comes in.
But looking back over my columns, I see that I’ve always added at least my two cents and sometimes even a nickel. Whether it was encouraging a certain firefighter candidate to reapply or suggesting that our open process for tabulating votes might be the purest distillation of the American dream, I have habitually offered my opinion.
In one column, I stated that Springfield communications director Ernie Slottag is good at his job — clearly an opinion, not a provable fact. And in a more recent column, I went so far as to describe Mayor Tim Davlin as young and handsome.
He didn’t object to that conclusion. However, a couple of weeks ago, when my column contained a less flattering analysis of his comments, Davlin responded with a lengthy letter to the editor lambasting me for daring to express my opinion.
In his critique, he repeatedly mischaracterized my column as “a news story”
while arguing that he needs an executive assistant. And his letter did, in fact,
change my mind: I’m still not sure he needs a new $80,000-per-year aide, but
I’ll agree that he does need an adviser who knows how to read a newspaper.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2005.
