We live in a world defined by entitlement.
• We’re entitled — we feel — that taxpayers will pick up the costs to bus our children to school.
• We’re entitled — we feel — if we’re a government employee to have the taxpayers pick up the bulk of our pension.
• We’re entitled — we feel — to have the Mariners win one World Series in our lifetime.
Feeling entitled isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you. It’s just a thing. Entitled simply means we expect to get something. We’re rarely overjoyed when we get it. It was expected, after all. But we get pretty cranky when we don’t get something we expect.
Newspapers run into the entitlement issue regularly. High school sports, arts groups, organizations and fundraisers to name just a few.
If something is going on, there is an expectation — an entitlement — that it will be covered by the newspaper.
An e-mail came in Friday wondering about coverage. It’s a good organization, doing good things and raising money.
“The Columbian coverage to date? MISSING!”
They felt entitled.
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Please don’t get me wrong, there’s something very positive about this entitlement mentality. Frankly it’s very nice to know that folks deem newspaper coverage so important that they will often fight for it.
When a group gets coverage from a newspaper it gives that group a little bit more meaning. Groups not only feel newspaper coverage gives them widespread recognition, it — on some level — validates what they have done.
And this is not only good for them but I’d admit good for us!
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Enter the Tea Party folks. They’ve got their thing going on both locally and nationally. They primarily have banded together to oppose too much government, especially when it comes to spending our dollars. Truth is I think they’re onto something. There’s a real growing resentment on how much of our tax money is being spent.
And guess what? Like so many other groups, they want newspaper coverage because it gives their group a little bit more meaning. Yes, they feel entitled.
To listen to some Tea Party folks you’d think The Columbian has ignored them. That’s silly of course. And not true.
In fact I did a Columbian library search of national and local stories, opinion pieces and letters to the editor. Did it come up blank? Nah. More than 100 items popped up. Since January!
But when the Tea Party got together recently and we didn’t cover it, we heard from them. They felt, like so many other groups and organizations, they were entitled.
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Newsrooms have only so many hands on deck, only so much room in a newspaper. We simply can’t do it all. But we will do as much as we can.
