EDITOR’S CORNER
Whenever I am away from my office for any extended period of time, someone always checks my emails for me.
Yes, I can do it remotely with any number of gadgets but when I get to go on vacation, dagnab it, that’s the kind of stuff I go on vacation from.
So someone goes into my office every day and clicks though the emails I’ve gotten over the past 24 hours.
Different people have done it through the years. And their response is always the same: “I thought I got lots of junk emails until I started checking yours.”
Indeed. And there’s a reason for it. When you are the editor of a newspaper your email address is about as public as it can get.
And many people, far far from Rockdale, see a flashing “FREE PUBLICITY” sign when they see an editor’s email address.
So my emails include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Political opinions. You soon learn to recognize “repeaters.” These are not people who want to tell you what they think of the city council or county commissioners, they are in New Hampshire or California and want to have their opinion on every single national issue published every week. (And if they sent me an email they sent one to every newspaper in the United States).
• Unsolicited columns. Lots of them.
• People, again far from Milam County, who will lie to you when you reply to them and say “I never solicited these, please unsubcribe me” and they reply, in effect “you did and we can’t.” Horse hockey.
• Bizarre little snippets advertising products and services. These always come twice and always from different email addresses although from their style it’s obvious they were generated in the same manner And the “to” box always shows an email that’s not mine and it’s always different from my address. (?)
• People wanting free ads for their products. Today it was “magic socks.” Yes, they are made out of silver, copper and zinc. I wanted to ask the guy if there’s so much current running through them you can open your garage door by crossing your feet.
• Every politician of all parties, again wanting free political ads under the guise of “news.” Candidate X thinks this about Issue Y. It makes me think about the famous headline from the Reporter circa 1904: “Legislature Considers Bills; Some of Them Important.”
Okay, it goes with the territory. If you are a newspaper editor that’s what you signed up for, mostly. Some are actually entertaining in a sideshow kind of way.
But they distract from the important stuff. And that’s you, Rockdale and Milam County.
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