We dip once more into the upper reaches of the CDN Editor’s Mailbag.
Q: Lots of talk about the new jail, or behavioral complex, or … what are they calling this facility that both incarcerates and diverts and hopefully rehabilitates offenders, anyway? Sort of matters.
A: Strongly agree. Local leaders have struggled with naming issues from the beginning. The terminology, in fact, has played a large role in the difficulty it took to get a public bond for a new facility over the finish line. It’s not easy to slap a label on a complex created by a pool of tax money to both divert folks from jail, place them in one, and help them get a leg up on their way out.
At CDN, we have been calling it the “jail and behavioral health facility” for lack of better/clearer phrasing.
Here’s a suggested compromise: We like the notion, applied in other locales, of a county Justice Center. But as a people we seem, via the bastardization of the term at the federal departmental level, to be slipping quickly into a national post-justice era — probably fitting given our yearslong status now as post-truth.
So perhaps we should just keep it simple and real and leave ample room for irrational exuberance with this monicker: Whatcom “Justice” Center. Finger quotes mandatory.
Q: Are you joking about that?
A: Not entirely.
Q: The local Whatcom County health folks seem active in the past few weeks promoting vaccine clinics and general disease information. Is this timing coincidental with the leanings of the new ruling junta in D.C.?
A: We did wonder when the vaccine clinics were announced recently whether the department might draw a larger crowd by deeming it a “Going Out of Business!” sale. But really, it doesn’t matter: This is their job, and it’s comforting to know health staffers are not only doing it, but perhaps stepping it up a bit in the face of the … larger national condition.
Q: But they can only distribute what they have, right? Is the federal government still going to ensure those supplies?
A: Good point. Ask again in six months. It is safe to say that with a national stable-genius leader who once saw fit to combat COVID-19 with black-light poster beams and Clorox, nothing is really guaranteed in this country anymore.
Q: You said elsewhere on the Opinion page that CDN has canceled its syndication contract with The Washington Post. Why, and what does that mean to us regular readers?
A: This is true. I first considered this some months ago, when Post owner Jeff Bezos egregiously spiked his newspaper’s planned presidential endorsement, a strong sign that his hands-off policy about the newspaper was sliding. But last week’s actions to basically embrace a continued personal presence in editorial-page decisions was a deal breaker. We won’t be running WaPo material here anymore.
Two reasons:
- Bezos’ missive about limiting the focus of WaPo opinion content is a clear signal to the White House that he’s willing to play ball in quelling WaPo criticism of the ruling junta, likely to perturb His Majesty the Right Honourable Donald J. Trump. It is particularly troubling given what seemed a decade-long strong start by Bezos in this role.
- Beyond that, the Amazon king’s pernicious public puckering constitutes a blatant conflict of interest — not just appearance of one. Bezos’ insertion of his own peevish brain into the paper’s editorial stances presents a textbook conflict between his newspaper’s Fourth Estate obligations, his e-commerce operation’s indefatigable thirst for world dominance, his own sense of billionaire entitlement, and let’s not forget his federal starship and potential cloud-storage contracts.
Any one of those would/should have been a deal breaker for an ethical newspaper owner who can’t resist meddling.
In short, while it’s clear many good newsroom journalists at The Post continue to do important, impressive work — for now — the institution’s brand has been needlessly compromised. It’s tragic given their historic role in preserving democracy at the risk of their own company.
Many of the paper’s columnists, who to date seem to be able to opine without undue influence, are quality thinkers; I will miss their voices and hope they find work somewhere else. But for now, the institution for which they toil is tainted in the eyes of the discerning public.
Q: Is that the only reason?
A: It was good enough, but honestly, no. CDN was already in the process of migrating away from weekly printed columns about national politics, mostly because reader surveys here and elsewhere suggest very limited interest in those subjects in an intensely local news product.
There’s plenty of national opinion, both reasoned and not, elsewhere. And The Post regularly failed to provide columnists who provided independent, conservative thought, choosing instead to promote what I consider to be demonstrably false, talking-points blather of authoritarian cheerleaders such as Marc Thiessen.
So a couple planets lined up for us to drop regular WaPo pieces. (It also saves us a bit of money, important in our quest for permanence.)
Q: What will take that space?
A: As it happens, we were already looking for ways to make more print-edition space for local columns and guest commentaries, and letters to the editor, one of our paper’s most popular features. This helps.
The best way to make us not regret the decision: Keep those guest comms and letters coming! They are critical to our mission of providing a common space for exchange of ideas, leading to a better-informed local electorate.
We do have some local citizens with true expertise on issues of national importance. (Just one example: Dr. Alan Lifson’s informed (and prophetic) recent piece about the perils of eschewing measles vaccines.) But we’re open to commentary on matters large and small. Lay them on us.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
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