Wisconsin Newspaper Backs Off Letter Request
UPDATED - Tuesday May 11, 2004 6:49pm
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Faced with a scarcity of letters praising the president, a newspaper in a Republican-leaning district appealed for pro-Bush letters, then backed off the request Tuesday amid complaints of blatant politics.
Last week in an editorial, The Post-Crescent said most of its letters had been coming from one side and asked readers "to help us 'balance' things out."
"We've been getting more letters critical of President Bush (website - news - bio) than those that support him," the editorial said. "We're not sure why, nor do we want to guess. But in today's increasingly polarized political environment, we would prefer our offering to put forward a better sense of balance."
On Tuesday, the newspaper located in Appleton, Wis., with a daily circulation of just over 56,000 ran a second editorial stepping back from the appeal. Executive editor Andrew Oppmann said the paper's intentions in the May 4 editorial had been misinterpreted.
"Hindsight being 20/20, I can see how invoking the candidate's name read like 'Hey, let's all jump on the Bush bandwagon,'" said Oppmann, who pointed out that the paper endorsed Democrat Al Gore in 2000. "But our intent was just to get more readers participating and telling people, 'Hey, if you don't like what you read, just write a letter and we'll run it.'"
The newspaper is located in a congressional district that Bush won handily in 2000, beating Gore, 52 percent to 43 percent. Some newspaper readers objected to the appeal. Ellen Kunz of Neenah, Wis., accused the paper of ignoring local sentiment against Bush in a letter published Tuesday on the paper's Web site.
"If you are receiving so many letters, indicating an imbalance of opinions, it is because your readers feel they need to do your job for you," Kunz wrote. "They are telling you that there isn't enough public scrutiny of this administration's policies and actions."
Della Besaw called the paper to complain, "Whose bright idea was it to solicit ready support for Bush? Was it a P-C executive decision or Gannett headquarters? The best support Bush Republicans and others can give for the closest thing to a despot this country has ever seen is their silence," according to a transcript printed on the Web site.
Oppmann said the editorial was a local decision and did not come from Gannett.
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