Not long ago, a large sign appeared in a pasture by a road not far from where I’m writing this. “Coming soon to this site,” it blared. You saw it and you thought: Oh, please. Not here. As you got closer, though, the smaller print became visible, and the thought was completed: “Absolutely nothing,” it said. This was thanks to a local group that had bought the land in order to prevent exactly what the sign first suggested. Out here in West Marin County, California, we live in a quiet, constant state of siege. The rolling ranchlands and ocean beaches are iconic. Point Reyes National Seashore, which occupies much of the coastland, draws more than two million visitors a year. You scan the unspoiled hills and it is not hard to imagine encampments of developers, waiting like guerrillas for their moment to descend.
Actually, much of the land is protected, which makes the remaining pockets and edges all the more contested. The social ecology is something else. A berserk real-estate market and Silicon Valley money have been changing the towns that occupy this special landscape. They are precariously unspoiled. Most of the people who live here couldn’t afford to if they had to buy in now. The protected seashore is expanding literally to the edge of Point Reyes Station, which is the closest thing to a hub. More tourists are coming, traffic is increasing, and second and third homes are proliferating. Carmel-ization is a pervasive dread. The resulting tensions are ripe journalistic fodder, but instead of just covering them, the local paper itself has become a focal point.
The Point Reyes Light is almost as iconic as the landscape it inhabits. In 1979, the Light became the little paper that could, when it won a Pulitzer for its...
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Hey, this article on Plotkin is terribly one-sided and unfair. I am a local journalist and I have followed the little tempest in Point Reyes Station since it began. Here is a article I wrote about it for the North Bay Bohemian, an alt-weekly. http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/06.20.07/byrne-0725.html
I can't believe that CJR wasted so much space on this badly reported hit piece.
Posted by Peter Byrne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
on Wed 16 Jan 2008 at 03:09 PM
It is not easy to respond to an accusation of “bad reporting” when the accuser offers no examples of it.
So instead I will just thank Mr. Byrne for helping me to make my point. The column to which he links – his own take on the controversy surrounding the Point Reyes Light – is a wonderful example of drive-by reporting that sneers at locals without any effort to get inside the story and understand it the way they themselves experience it.
In other words, it is another version of the language of strangers
The column is based on a visit Mr. Byrne paid to Point Reyes Station to cover a small demonstration outside the offices of the Light. He also had some conversations with the Light’s owner, Robert Plotkin, about the possibility of working for him.
It wasn’t exactly a deep dig, reporting-wise, and it shows. If Byrne really thinks we are just a bunch of “affluent” people who are obsessed over a photograph of a goat head – well, I suggest he spend a little more time with us.
Did he notice that next to the Light offices is a thrift store? It does a brisk local business, and not for reasons of retro chic. (If we are all so affluent, my wife wants to know where I’m hiding it.)
Does he really think that outing a neighbor who is an undocumented worker, is a trivial matter, on a par with a photograph of a goat head?. If so, he is operating on a different value system than most of us are. Perhaps he didn’t notice, but I didn’t even mention the goat head in my piece.
Byrne acknowledges that Plotkin is “narcissistic,” which is his word not mine. But he blames this trait upon us dim-witted locals, who lack a capacity to appreciate good journalism. “Townies waving pitchforks and whale-oil lanterns,” he calls us.
Now that’s reporting. It’s an interesting psychological theory too – reader-induced narcissism. If Byrne spent a little more time here, though, I think he’d find that most people think the chain of causation runs the other way.
Posted by Roget![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
on Sat 26 Jan 2008 at 06:03 PM
Re the interchange above: The first is a typical journalistic cheapshot - little information coupled with limited experience; the second post deconstructs the first. I read Byrne's piece in his 'newspaper.' The quality of the original is reflected in his post above.
Posted by Michael Mery![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
on Sun 27 Jan 2008 at 03:05 PM
Petah, Petah, Petah--sit yourself down, read much, study hard. . .and maybe someday you will write a piece as brilliantly spot-on about small town newspapers and what they mean to a community as Jonathan Rowe has done.
Let's compare the lead paragraphs from both pieces:
Rowe's:
"Not long ago, a large sign appeared in a pasture by a road not far from where I’m writing this. “Coming soon to this site,” it blared. You saw it and you thought: Oh, please. Not here. As you got closer, though, the smaller print became visible, and the thought was completed: “Absolutely nothing,” it said. This was thanks to a local group that had bought the land in order to prevent exactly what the sign first suggested. Out here in West Marin County, California, we live in a quiet, constant state of siege. The rolling ranchlands and ocean beaches are iconic. Point Reyes National Seashore, which occupies much of the coastland, draws more than two million visitors a year. You scan the unspoiled hills and it is not hard to imagine encampments of developers, waiting like guerrillas for their moment to descend."
Byrne's:
"Last week, I wandered over to Point Reyes Station to check out the demonstration against Robert Plotkin, the owner, publisher and editor of the Point Reyes Light newspaper. I was shocked by the vehemence of the anti-Plotkin threats emanating from the mouths of the 10 people (not counting five reporters) seething on the sidewalk in front of the newspaper's office. "Shoplift the Light," screamed one disheveled guy before he scampered off to do whatever troubled people do in West Marin."
Picture a classroom. . .Journalism 101. . .picture the prof offering these two lead paragraphs. Picture the students having to choose the one that most exemplifies effective, interesting writing; the one that would force them to read on. Which one would they choose? Hmmm. . .
Now picture that same prof presenting a single quote from the new owner of a beloved small town newspaper which, up to that point, had been known not only for its ability to understand and report on the local condition, but was known far and wide for having earned a coveted Pulitzer for outstanding reporting. The little newspaper that could.
The new owner said, "I am in the process of selecting the Magnificent Seven; five literary journalists and two Magnum-quality photojournalists that will be the revolutionary vanguard of editorial quality. Every scene piece will be of Talk Of The Town quality. Every story dense with information will be written with the sophistication and wit of the Economist. Every photograph will capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson called, “The decisive moment.” We will serve as a model of what a newspaper can be, so that others may learn from our example."
When the laughter finally stopped in that classroom of untried, still-novice journalists, the professor would have made his point without uttering another word.
I vividly remember that Pulitzer win. I remember how excited I was for that little paper, even from my far away post in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I was small-town, privy to small-town news, and I could only imagine what that win must have meant to them all.
But, Peter, in case you missed it, here is the capper in Jonathan Rowe's piece (perfectly entitled "The Language of Strangers"). This is what it was all about. This is why you should stick to what you know and perhaps look for another soapbox:
Rowe: "I asked about the literary journalism, how it relates to the usual weekly fare of the Point Reyes Light—a meeting of the county board of supervisors, for example? Well, he said, Joan Didion wrote about county supervisor meetings. Look at her.
Joan Didion? She of the clinical dispassion and acidic eye? Didion was writing about locals, but not for them. She was trotting them out for the amusement of readers in Los Angeles and New York. That Plotkin hadn’t thought about the difference struck me as a little ominous."
Posted by monicalee![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
on Sun 27 Jan 2008 at 06:25 PM
I wish the CJR's headline writers had been more careful. The subhed for "The Language of Strangers" (as well as the story's cover blurb) refers to a "hotshot editor," which, as Jonathan Rowe's finely reported and written article demonstrates, is a mischaracterization of Robert Plotkin. Before he bought the Point Reyes Light, Plotkin had been the editor of nothing. He is a wealthy dilettante with a journalism degree playing out a Walter Mitty fantasy at the Light, and the West Marin community suffered for it until the advent of the rival Citizen. He was no "hotshot"; it's not clear he has even been published by other than himself. The irony, of course, is that in its subhed and cover blurb overstatements, the CJR is guilty of exactly the kind of inaccurate claim Plotkin has excelled at in his newspaper.
Posted by Steve Bjerklie![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cjr.org/nav-commenters.gif)
on Tue 5 Feb 2008 at 06:59 AM
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