The Sacramento Bee responds

At least one reader responded to my suggestion [You mean my suggestion–ed. It’s all good] on how to respond to the Sacramento Bee‘s ombudsman Tony Marcano’s distaste for letting Daniel Weintraub’s blog go unedited — they e-mailed Marcano. To which the ombudsman replied:

My policy is to ignore readers who feel it necessary to resort to insults. There will be no further responses from this office to your e-mails.

I’m not going to reprint the reader’s entire e-mail to the ombudsman, but the only thing in it that was remotely close to insulting was the final question: “When did the the Bee turn so gutless?” Now I’ll admit that I probably wouldn’t have phrased it that harshly, but given that the ombudsman’s job is to hear complaints, doesn’t this response suggest someone too thin-skinned for the job? Undeterred, our trusty reader pressed forward in his search for a response. He finally succeeded in getting a real reply from David Holwerk, who is Weintraub’s editor. Here’s his reply:

As the guy who edits Dan Weintraub’s column and his blog items, I have to say I disagree with your contention that it is “crystal clear to all readers that Weintraub speaks for himself in his blog.” My experience is that many readers regard the blog and all of our on-line content as an extension of The Bee. My aim as Dan’s editor is not to change his opinions or alter his viewpoints, but to make sure that his blog items are clearly written and adequately explained and do not engender reactions he does not intend. That is what editors do. If they do that well, they can actually make writers more effective. That’s what I and other editors at The Bee try to do every day. You can judge for yourself to what degree we succeed.

This is a pretty decent response in my book. Good editors deal with good writers by improving the form of the writing so that the content is clear. I’m not a regular reader of Weintraub’s blog, so only time will tell if this is what actually happens. As a statement of what an editor does, however, Holwerk’s reply sounds like a promising start. Of course, Mickey Kaus has his own thoughts on the matter:

Weintraub is a Bee editorial-page employee, not a news employee. Apparently the news side of the Bee has never liked his blog, for some obvious reasons–e.g. he’s been beating the pants off them. His provocative anti-Bustamante comments were enough to trigger a newsroom-led bureaucratic Thermidor. (It was as if he was criticizing affirmative action!) Executive editor Rick Rodriguez says “folks on the staff brought” the issue to him after Weintraub’s posting. They “wanted to know if it was edited,” he says, though he adds he suspects they mainly wanted to “yell at some editors” about it. Rodriguez volunteers the ethnic makeup of the angry newsroom “folks”: “Some were Latino, some Anglo, some black.” The result was a review of Weintraub’s status. “Our policy at the Bee is that everything’s edited,” Rodriguez declares.

Hmmmm…. given that the Bee’s editorial staff also has created their own group blog, this may be a case of newsroom subcultures clashing. Definitely click on the Kaus link, by the way. It’s a long and information-rich post.