EDITORIAL: Our choice for District 18A

Response to Oct. 23, 2008 editorial titled “Our Choice for District 18A”

The editorial printed in the Oct. 23, 2008 edition of the Hutchinson Leader titled “Our Choice for District 18A” states that the Leader supports Eric Angvall over incumbent Rep. Ron Shimanski. I question if the editorial is truly about Eric Angvall being able to do a better job in St. Paul than Rep. Shimanski or if the heart of the matter stems solely on the Luce Line Trail paving issue.

For those that may have not read the above mentioned editorial, about one third of it specifically deals with details regarding the Luce Line Trail and no other issue. Is this how we should be electing our officials?

Other comments in the article like “practical people are needed in St. Paul” and that Mr. Angvall’s history as Mayor and as a business owner in Lester Prairie “takes financial discipline” may be true, but does that mean that Rep. Shimanski isn’t a “practical person” or lacks “financial discipline”? I don’t believe this to be true. After all, in the financial state that Minnesota is in, wouldn’t spending on essentials for the state/district instead of wants (paving of the Luce Line Trail) be considered financially responsible?

If you do some research you will find many bills with Rep. Shimanski’s name on as either an author or co-author that directly dealt with issues within the district along with issues that pertain to greater Minnesota.

As I wrote back in Feb. of this year, our representatives have a very difficult job and have to figure out how to best spend taxpayer dollars by prioritizing what is best for their district and Minnesota as a whole. This all has to be done while still trying to keep the state government in some kind of fiscal balance.

I believe Rep. Shimanski has done a good job of representing the entire district and will continue to do so if re-elected.

Greg Graczyk
Silver Lake, MN

Trebuchet, nearly all newspapers publish opinion on editorial pages in addition to publishing news pages.

The Leader publishes an Opinion page in each edition with an editorial, letters from readers and a reader opinion poll. All of these offerings are found on the printed Opinion pages or on this Web site under the Opinion category. The headline of the piece above begins with the label "Editorial" to further tell readers it is opinion. We also accept reader opinion online, such as the comment you made here.

This tradition of running an opinion section of the paper began in the first edition of the Leader on July 10, 1880, and continues today. The tradition is as strong today as ever. The Leader published 27 reader letters in its Tuesday print edition.

I use the trail to bike quite a bit. My kids love to go on wagon rides on the trail. And yes whenever I go the trail has many people on it also. I understand there is more pressing matters but I would love to see the trail paved. It would not be a waste.

My concern is not with others' opinions or even the opinions of the newspapers editors. My concern is that media outlets are picking favorites when they should be reporting facts unbiasedly. There are many that believe that the media influences the outcome of elections by choosing which stories to run and not to run. This appears to confirm those beliefs.

Actually, newspapers today are probably less bias on their news pages, or even their edit pages, than they were historically. In the 1800s, newspapers were typically founded by firebrand publisher-editors with a distinct political lean one way or the other, and that was carried over into their names. There were many papers with Republican or Democrat in their title. Many towns, Hutchinson included, had competing newspaper, often supporting opposing political viewpoints. I suspect as the newspaper industry has consolidated over the years, many papers have become somewhat “homogenized,” trying to straddle the middle.

Newspapers go to great lengths to build an internal “fire wall” between their newsrooms and editorial board. But, yes, various newspapers still are known to “lean” one way or the other.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is often labeled "liberal", but I've noticed this year they've endorsed Sen. Coleman, Rep. Kline and some other Republicans for Legislative seats. In addition, it appears to have made special efforts to run a lot of conservative national columnists — George Will and Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, David Brooks and William Kristol of the New York Times, and Debra J. Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle, on its daily second opinion page, balanced by liberal columnists such as E. J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post, Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman (a native of St. Louis Park) of the New York Times, Garrison Keillor. I haven’t kept a running total, but it seems conservative columnists have appeared as often, if not slightly more often than the liberal columnists.

It has been my experience as a reporter that often times readers who complain about bias in a story really mean they didn’t like that the story told both sides of an issue. Balance and fairness is not what some readers want. They don’t want to hear the other side.

In some ways, the Internet and the proliferation of cable news channels has preyed upon some people’s basic instinct to not hear anything that might challenge their view less it makes them doubt themselves and their beliefs. With all the options out there now, people can easily avoid ever getting the other side’s point of view, something that might happen if they were to read, watch or visit a middle-of-the-road media source that still attempts to give both sides equal play.

I think this could be playing a role in how polarized politics has become. If we only converse with those of like views, do we ever\ really develop empathy for all people and their different viewpoints?

So, when Trebuchet pines for the good ole' days, I'm not sure those ever existed. This might be as unbias as it has been or ever will be again.

(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at davis@hutchinsonleader.com.)