BECAUSE I CAN no longer stomach . . .
. . . the editorial page or the local columnists.
I quit reading at the end of 2010 but waited to say anything because I wanted to write a careful and systematic indictment of the Chronicle's voice. After six weeks away, however, I no longer much wish to bother. There are better uses of time. Click on Journalism or Houston Chronicle under "Categories" in the right column of Unca D to review particular complaints. And continue to read blogHouston and Harris County Almanac for righteous takedowns of current and future misdeeds at the newspaper.
My wish as a young man was to be a great reporter. I hold a master's degree in journalism from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. On graduation, I won a Pulitzer Fellowship that helped finance three months' travel to Europe. It was a promising start. In time, however, I turned out to be an okay journalist, but not a great one. So I moved on to other things.
I flash my credentials to make two points: First, I know a thing or two about journalism; second, I take it very seriously. In fact, I love it. All that stuff about freedom of the press and the importance of an informed citizenry, it's true.
Overall, I have great sympathy for the Houston Chronicle. It is a victim -- leading with its chin, in my humble opinion, but a victim nevertheless -- of the large forces that are crushing most newspapers today.
The paper is too thin? It doesn't cover what needs covering? These are unavoidable manifestations of the financial troubles that follow when advertisers start staying away in droves.
There are pockets of excellence at the paper, most notably the photographers. News coverage is hit or miss, but -- to an extent many critics probably don't accept -- that's a common to American journalism. Reporters and editors have bad days. Some are better than others. That's life. The point is to fight the good fight every day. And that happens often enough at the Chronicle. My admiration for the news side is decidedly mixed, but my sympathies are not. I always wish the reporters and editors the best, and cheer when they achieve it.
The opinion voice at the Chronicle no longer has my sympathy. It is to journalism as a toxic waste site is to the environment -- something that needs to be shut down and covered over.
That's hard for me to say. I probably read the editorials more closely than the writers' mothers. I certainly read them more carefully that the newspaper's editors. And I still believe -- unlike most of my blogger friends -- that there's still a place for the institutional editorial page.
Some problems with the editorial page and the columnists are one with the problems of the news side -- too few people trying to do too much work. And, to be fair, not every editorial or every column is bad. On balance, however, Houston, and the profession, would be better off without the newspaper's opinion writers.
The newspaper serves a largely conservative and traditionalist readership, in the broadest sense of those words. Houston and its surrounds -- and Texas to an even greater extent -- sport a variety of people with a variety of ideas and values. But in economics, culture, religion, and politics, the people of Houston and Texas are still deeply rooted in the rich soil of Texas.
They believe in God. They love America and Texas. They believe in hard work and personal responsibility. They recognize the proper role of government, but understand as well the proper limits of government. They wish to leave their children and grandchildren a better world.
How offensive it is, and foolish, for the newspaper to engage not one person as an editorial writer or columnist who truly understands and respects the people newspaper purports to serve. The best they can muster is Mr. Langworthy -- a wonderful human being, a severely honest man -- who represents big-government Republicanism.
The Chronicle's refusal to admit on single voice from the right is a self-inflicted wound and in my view a deliberate insult to the readers. We never -- and I mean never --read a full-throated and unapologetic explication, much less defense, of the conservative and traditional ideas and values that make Houston and Texas different, and better, than most other places.
In some ways, the editorial voice is better now than a few years. Running off the self-reverential Mr. Gibbons and the radical Ms. Georggson and Ms. Kolker could not help but improve the product. The Chronicle's outright sneering at Houston and Texas has been toned down, though not eliminated. Still, the paper has maintained its steady leftward course.
The elections of November 2010 repudiated every major political candidate and most policy preferences the newspaper has supported over the past few years. It's not too much to say that the elections were also a repudiation of the ideas and values of the editorialists and other opinion writers at the Chronicle and elsewhere -- cheerleaders for a "fundamental transformation" of America that, when it had the chance, America fundamentally rejected.
How would the newspaper respond to this seismic rejection of its people and programs? For a month or so, things seemed to improve. For a while, the editorial column played smallball. A few editorials even leaned in the right direction. On November 16, for instance, the paper praised the bipartisan debt commission and declared that the "debt/deficit issue is one . . . that can't be kicked down the road any more." Four days later, another editorial said earmark reform was largely symbolic, but still a good idea.
Could the light be dawning? Were these precursors of a a new, more sensible editorial voice?
Alas, no. I suspect the quiet period represented little more than the vacation schedule of the writers. While the redhots were away, it appeared, common sense had its play.
By late November, sadly, the editorials returned to form: a stew of reliably leftist ideas flavored heavily with self-righteousness and condescension. A puff job on November 24 about electric cars. Sneering the same day at unenlightened souls who resist, as a price for getting on an airplane, either a full-body scan or an intrusive patdown. ("Take a breath.")
I swore off the Houston Chronicle on Christmas day. A point of pride at the newspaper is never to participate editorially in a respectful way in any civic and religious holiday. Not the Fourth of July. Not Thanksgiving. Not Christmas (with the rare and not-to-be-repeated exception of a decent editorial on Christmas 2009).
The news side did a fine job on Christmas day. A banner photograph -- excellent, as usual -- depicted the nativity scene outside St. Luke's Presbyterian church. A small embedded headline said, "Peace on earth." "Merry Christmas!" said a subhead in the teaser for weather news. And other front-page teasers promoted features on Christmas birds in the Star section and photographs of Santa in City & State.
I recognize that secular newspapers do not promote Christmas or other religious holidays, but it's entirely appropriate to cover them and to reflect the language and themes in text and images.
Meanwhile, over at the editorial page we were greeted by "Christmas present," about a new state park and the census-inspired enlargement of the Texas congressional delegation by four new seats. The suggestion was that Democratic-leaning minorities should get all or most of the new seats.
Below came "Christmas future" (Get it? Christmas present; Christmas future.) It was a weepy screed about payday lenders -- an editorial that could have run on any day of the year but that our betters at the Chronicle deemed appropriate for a holy holiday.
This is the sentence that sent me out the door: "This topic may not be the gauzy fare usually served up for Editorial [read editorial] page readers on Christmas morning, but with the Texas Legislature [read legislature] convening in January . . . ."
There you have it. Condescension, expressed pithily in one word: gauzy.
For the Chronicle, that's the only possible explanation of why editorialists less brave than its own might choose to lay down their arms for one sweet day. Christmas is for the common folks. Never mind the religious signficance of the holiday. Never mind that Christianity is foundational to Western Civilization. To the hardcore leftists at the Chronicle editorialists and columnists, Christmas is just another day. After all, the legislature will soon meet.
It struck me: I no longer wish to have anything to do with such a snotty, self-righteous, wrongheaded editorial page or the newspaper that hosts it.
So long. Farewell. Auf wiedersehen. Goodbye.
So how is life without the Houston Chronicle's editorial page and without the equally snotty, self-righteous, and wrongheaded columnists?
Just fine, thank you very much. Good riddance.
For the moment, Lady Diana still wishes to receive the paper. The happy day that changes, we'll drop the subscription and cease to subsidize the unworthy Houston Chronicle with either our attention or our money.
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