August 7, 2021
To George Gramlich, editor,
Sangre de Cristo Sentinel:
Dear Sir:
Congratulations on your fine paper. My family and friends and I read every word and every ad each week, and I think this publication has gotten a lot better over the years.
I hear complaints about your editorial style a lot. The truth is, your style of stating your opinion using humor and caricature has a long pedigree in journalism.
I keep having to defend the Sentinel for having such an obvious conservative slant, but that puts you in good company with Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine, and those other revolutionary guys who got this nation going in the first place.
Then there is Mark Twain. If I were you, George, I would aspire to this man’s literary genius and ornery journalism.
No one was safe from character roasting from your nineteenth century brother in trade. From reading some of his novels, you get this idea that Twain was a pretty well-educated writer, and if you do not already have them stuck up on the wall of your office, you should get a copy of his rules for writing and stick them up there in the newsroom for everyone to learn and inwardly digest. But all that erudition did not keep him from getting down in the mud to take the powerful down a peg, and to expose the eccentricities of the self-righteous in the Golden Age.
The idea of a neutral-just-the-facts- publication is fairly recent. I went to journalism school in the 1970s, and they taught us in four years of two semesters each of newswriting, to just give the facts, and leave opinion to the, uh, opinion page.
The problem with that is that no observer of anything is really disinterested. When you see an obvious criminal being arrested, your story in the paper will sound a little like this was justice done.
We need to get over the neutral writing paradigm because it is pulling the wool over the eyes of most Americans who believe that any news show they see on television, or any article they read in any publication is neutral!
I just had to cancel my subscription to Southern Living of all things because I can no longer stomach the attitude of the editors there. How subtle can politics be?
Everyone has a point of view, and it is in the best interests of a well-informed public if readers understand the point of view of writers. When I read an article in a scholarly journal, I look the author up on the WEB to see where his values were formed, and what else he or she has written.
Since not all publications are as honest as this one, I hope all the readers of the Sentinel get real savvy about getting to the source of where what they are reading originates.
Keep up the good work, George, and if you need to come up with some other cute descriptions of the county commissioners, I can help you with that, but I warn you, I have a big, bad crush on the Chairman and I do not care who knows that!
Wishing all of you the best,

Joanne L. Canda
Rural Custer County