No-name letters hold no weight here

As I went to grab a letter sitting in my mailbox this week, I

couldn’t help but notice the words scrawled in pen on the outside.

“I know you consider yourselves as the ‘mouthpiece’ of the city of

NB staff, however I ‘dare’ you to print this where people can see

it.”

Pretty strong words, I thought. This person must have something

big to say.

So, I read the letter.

“Dear Readers: I cannot and will not sit silently any longer,

while city leaders and staff steal our unique, small, waterfront

town’s simple, quiet and individualized lifestyle.”

The letter writer went on to allege a host of conspiracies in

Newport city government and make some suggestions as to what should

become of city hall.

So who is this person who has cracked the code? Who has learned

the awful truth about the Daily Pilot’s pledge to be the mouthpiece

of Newport City Hall and the city’s longstanding secret to steal the

lifestyle of residents?

I glanced to the bottom of the letter to see the name and guess

what?

There was none.

How typical.

Dear readers, sorry for the sarcasm, but I must tell you that

letters like this really gets my goat.

That somehow we have to be dared into publishing a letter or story

that criticizes us or criticizes city leaders is laughable. If that

was our policy, nobody would know the name of Greenlight or Phil Arst

or Alan Beek or in Costa Mesa the Improvement movement or Chris Steel

or Allan Mansoor.

But the biggest farce of all regarding this letter is the opening

statement.

“I cannot and will not sit silently any longer ...” says Mr. or

Mrs. Anonymous.

Sorry but it takes zero courage to pen a letter that accuses

people of all sorts of things and leave off the name of the accuser.

Our policy has been, for as long as I’ve been affiliated with this

newspaper, to not run anonymous letters. And we will never run them

as long as I am at the helm.

This letter writer may have some good ideas. But I encourage this

anonymous citizen to do the same as everyone else who criticizes city

government or the newspaper: Put your thoughts and opinion on paper,

with verifiable facts, send it to us with your name, address,

hometown and phone number for verification purposes only and more

than likely, we will run it.

It’s very rare that a letter doesn’t run in the Daily Pilot,

regardless of who it criticizes. Just get the facts straight.

*

Again this week, there was a local connection to the war in Iraq

for those of us here in Newport-Mesa, this time one that involved a

member of the media.

Moises Saman, a Newsday photojournalist, was one of four

journalists freed from Iraqi captors this week.

Daily Pilot readers may remember that name because Saman worked

for a short time as a freelancer for us and for one of our former

sister papers in Santa Monica.

In addition, Saman was a college chum of Daily Pilot City Editor

James Meier at Cal State Fullerton.

They worked on the school’s Daily Titan newspaper, said Meier, who

remembers Saman as being a good photographer.

Small world when, for example, you can be shooting the opening day

of the Orange County Fair one day and later be dodging bullets as a

war photographer.