Editor’s Notes
Before retirement and involvement with BWNA, many Thanksgivings ago, I was a Portland Public School District high school teacher, and one of the subjects I taught was Social Studies. “Current Events” was a staple of the curriculum, which meant having to stay on top of each day’s news developments, pleasant or not. Though still a political junkie of sorts, I don’t miss feeling obligated to keep current on things like presidential press conferences or (heaven help the dutiful Social Studies teacher) daily tweets. But I do miss those classroom discussions—evaluating facts, parsing issues, drawing conclusions. And lessons learned back then continue to resonate.
I’m sure you can recall high school and/or college instructors who espoused their personal opinions either prior to or in the midst of class discussions. I took the opposite approach—doing what I could to conceal my partisan views, functioning as an objective referee and fact-checker, and letting the evidence speak to the students for itself. Now, all these years later in my volunteer work as editor, reporter, and commentator, it feels like déjà vu in that I’m still advocating for and operating within an ethos where assertions are backed by empirical data and arguments are free from unfounded generalizations and erroneous assumptions. (Aside: In a political era of dueling realities in which even scientifically verifiable proofs are dismissed as “fake news,” accuracy and clarity in reporting are more important than ever.)
While a code of ethics is essential for a publication, content management invariably captures the spotlight—for better or worse. Case in point: our previous issue featured a number of articles (including the front-page article) relating to the racial justice movement and BWNA’s non-discrimination policy, with specific references to Black Lives Matter. Predictably, reader feedback ran the gamut—from “I look forward to more of the same!” to “Enough already!” Which begs the question: who or what is responsible for determining which topics make the cut in each newsletter? Conventional wisdom is that the buck stops with the editor, but that’s only partially true in my case. To begin with, our newsletter team serves at the pleasure of the board, meaning that board priorities take precedence with respect to what gets published and what doesn’t. Also, content selection is an organic process dependent on a host of unpredictable factors such as breaking local news, board initiatives, size and kind of in-house and at-large article submissions, and feedback from neighbors in the form of “Letter to the Editor” editorials, “Contact Us” e-mails via the BWNA website, and phone calls to board members. In addition, there are designated features that automatically receive priority for inclusion, such as the President’s Message column, my Editor’s Notes column, non-time-sensitive articles whose publication had to be postponed due to lack of space, “Kathy’s Kitchen” recipes, advertiser profile articles, and of course the ads themselves. Thus, decisions on newsletter content are in no way a product of a “my-way-or-the-highway” editor; rather, it’s a collaborative and deferential process based on a wide range of factors.
And the result? An eclectic publication for an eclectic neighborhood grounded in family-friendly, neighborly values—something to be thankful for in unstable times.