Archive: Opinions

Dear Dan,

I was disappointed in your article in last Friday's Star covering the debate among candidates for local office.  I thought you did Pat Pryor a considerable disservice (probably inadvertently) by your poor editing.  The picture you published with Mike Sigler in the forground and a "diminutive" almost "shrinking" Pat Pryor in the background was badly chosen. 

My bigger complaint is the lack of careful proofreading that caused you repeatedly to misspell Pat Pryor's name in the last couple of paragraphs of the article.  I suspect the the misspellings ("prior" instead of "Pryor") came from your spell checker's autocorrect feature and your failure to proofread.

For that failure, I hereby condemn you to watch a YouTube video of Taylor Mali, a public school teacher and slam poet.  Among a number of his pieces you'll find on YouTube is one entitled "The Impotence of Proofreading".  The chastening will do you good, and you'll get a good laugh in the process.

Tom Vawter

From: Tom Vawter
Lansing

Editor's Reply:

On reflection I probably should have led with the last paragraph as it was arguably the only new news since the in depth interviews I was privileged to be granted by all six candidates (and which remain live in the Star on the Elections page).  As it was impossible to cover the breadth of topics debated in a short article I decided to make the recording live so readers can judge for themselves.

As for the picture, Pat Pryor is a small person and Mike Sigler is a big one.  I always pick the picture that makes all the subjects look their best and that was the best of the pictures I had -- it never occurred to me that physical stature has anything to do with being an effective legislator or candidate.  I purposely waited until they were sitting so that they could be both reasonably in the picture.

As for the misspellings, mea culpa -- my only excuse is that it was the last article written in a very busy week.  One of the advantages of an online newspaper is that when people find typographical errors I can correct them in place, as I did when Mr. Vawter sent this letter.

I try to be scrupulous about not endorsing candidates, and no disservice was intended to Pat Pryor or any of the candidates, all of whom I like and admire.  Thanks to Tom Vawter for the Taylor Mali reference.  To prove that I have served the sentence he doled out I will try to proofread the pepper better in the future.

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