Street Level

Wow. It's been quite the week. A simple story, pretty straightforward, if you ask me, leads to people calling me up asking if I like being Public Enemy No. 1, if I'm deliberately trying to destroy the local food bank, stuff like that. Even got an email from the executive director of the food bank asking why I'm writing such mean stories and hurting people's feelings.

Unfortunately, as a reporter, we're not allowed to actually yell at people like that, so I did the next best thing and said "Gee, I'm just doing my job. You're the one making the news. I'm just writing it."

All this because two large agencies, the New Life Mission and the Salvation Army, pulled out of a massive food-recovery program run by them and the food bank, for reasons they explained quite succinctly. It happened, move on. Deal with it. Even the one agency head who came to me with the story decided to stop talking to me about it after it was published, with nothing more than an email that this person didn't care anymore.

There are days I wish I'd followed father's advice and become a secretary. At least then, the person doing the talking knows that we're just taking notes of what they're saying.

Posted by Dale at 11:28 a.m. Comments