Of horrific crimes and how it all adds up:
Terrible incident
When the story first filtered into the newsroom this week it immediately was very troubling.
A young woman — for no fathomable reason — had acid thrown in her face.
It was unimaginable.
The Columbian — like many other news outlets — pieced together a story. We immediately put it on the Web.
Getting something on the Web quickly not only gets the news out there but it allows the community to begin a conversation by commenting on that story.
In days gone by, that community conversation might have been with your neighbors over your backyard fence. And it would have begun after you read your morning Columbian.
Today, no one’s willing to wait. So the community conversation begins immediately. And it’s on the Web.
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I try to follow these comments on our site the best I can. And they were going pretty well on this story. There was a great deal of anger toward the assailant, a great deal of sympathy toward the victim, some pleas for witnesses to come forward and even some suggestions on how to try and prevent this in the future.
But because the assailant was described as black and the victim was white, some racial overtones began to creep into the conversation.
Our story responsibly described the assailant. When police are looking for a suspect, that’s standard. And part of that description is race. Unfortunately, that is often a recipe for trouble.
At first we began deleting the racial comments. But that could become a full-time job if it gets out of hand. So we eventually had to shut the comments off.
And I hate doing that. I’ve told folks in the newsroom that shutting it down should be a last resort. The comments are an important way to give the community a voice. And I’m reluctant to shut that off. Also, shutting it down means we let a small minority dictate a result to the large majority.
And that ain’t right.
So please be respectful as you can when you voice your opinion on our Web site. That will allow you — and others — to continue to have a voice.
Money talk
My column last week — on why newspapers were slow on the trigger to cover public employee salaries and the cost to taxpayers — generated a bunch of comments. There were way too many to discuss here, but I’ll tackle just one.
I pointed out that the fire chief, who is retiring at age 54 after 35 years in the department, will receive $1 million from his state pension before many of us — at age 65 — receive our first dime from Social Security.
A few folks said, so what? The chief is sort of like the CEO of HP, and she’ll get a bunch of money, too.
Well, OK, if you say so.
But what would you say if the same math were applied to a firefighter, not the chief?
A March 4 story we did showed that Vancouver firefighters (a category called fire suppression) on average earn $92,000 a year.
So if a firefighter the same age as the chief (54), who had the same number of years in the agency (35), retired, he would get 70 percent of his pay.
That’s $64,000 a year. So by the time you received your first dime in Social Security at age 65, a firefighter would have $700,000 from his state pension.
Only one chief but lots of firefighters.
Good or bad, it’s worth a community discussion.
Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.
