Ann Coulter and the St. Augustine Record Debate --- 16 Ways for the Record to Be Read Again

Readers write back and forth in the St. Augustine Record about Ann Coulter. She's an overpaid agent-provocateur and a bad TV performance artist, who once dated Bill Maher. Ann Coulter is what she appears -- Ann Coulter is a devious right-wing lawyer with a potty mouth and a stack of crazy beliefs that loons will buy at the drop of a hat whenever she writes a putative “book,” of the kind my mother would always call a “non-book.” I challenged her to a debate when I was Out in the City columnist, after she called Senator John Edwards a "faggot" Ann Coulter's publicist, William Morris Co., never responded. "Why does baloney reject the grinder," as William F. Buckley once asked (of someone who would not debate him). The late conservative Buckley's National Review fired Ann Coulter for bigotry after 9/11, which only helped to build her fanatic following. When Ann Coulter's father died, Ann Coulter wrote a column that paid tribute to his union-busting acumen. She's a hater and a bully who formerly clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. She's no dummy. She's laughing all the way to the bank with her nostrums, laughing at the rubes and lugibrious goobers who read, believe and pay for those nostrums.

In recent letters to the editor, Record readers made the point that the Record prints Ann Coulter to "sell newspapers." Sure enough. It works.

There are other, better ways to sell newspapers than printing bigoted rants against Gays, Democrats, unions and progressives. I can think of at least 16 of them this morning. 

If the Record really wanted to sell newspapers, it would do the following:

1.  Print a Peter Guinta column at least once each week. Peter Guinta is a sage reporter whose weekly column was canceled by the Record when he offended people (e.g., made them think). His last column was simultaneously pro-marijuana legalization and pro-gun owner rights – libertarian and principled. He's an experienced reporter whose own employer censored his words, while running Ann Coulter (and paying oodles for the privilege over the years). . There is no principled reason why Morris Communications cannot promote a reporter to columnist and print his column in all their newspapers – self-syndication beats paying for the Ann Coulters of the world.
   
   
2. Rehire fired political cartoonist Ed Hall and restore local political cartoonists to the Opinion pages. The Record wrongfully fired Ed Hall under tortious pressure from the School Superintendent and his cronies, including the Arts Council's then-President, Phil McDaniel (who wrote a bloviating cartoon of a guest column, complaining about Ed Hall's cartoon depicting a generic Florida School Superintendent as being fat and bloated on a big salary, while cutting arts and music. The cartoon was not about the School Superintendent, but to flex his political muscle, our School Superintendent and his thin-skinned cronies saw to it that Ed Hall's wonderful cartoons would never run in the Record again – that is a chilling effect and you need to apologize to Ed Hall and rehire him.

3. Question government officials more often, and cover government meetings gavel-to-gavel, with details on all actions on the website (or in smaller agate type the way we did at the Appalachian Observer). Shallow surface reporting is like a thin gruel. We deserve a banquet of news, not mere crumbs.


4. Run longer stories. Too often, several stories flowing from a government meetings are printed in dribs and drabs, over days. Tell what you know, when you know it, instead of waiting for an opening in your tiny “news hole,” which grows smaller and smaller and smaller year by year by year.


5. Invest in long-term enterprise journalism and investigative reporting. Start uncovering the rocks in governments, businesses and non-profits. For openers, Flagler College has two undisclosed plans, which presumably involve expanding further into St. Augustine and further reducing our tax base – please investigate. Our St. Johns County government has a $600 million/year budget, and its operations are not covered well. I reckon our Tea Party friends' suspicions are probably right – there is potential waste, fraud and abuse in every government. GO FIND IT – do your jobs.


6. “Dance with the ones that brung you” – every new Record Publisher ends up moving here (or not moving here), while associating socially with the same influentials and advertisers, joining boards with them, hanging out with them. The Record Publisher's and Editor's pals' views should not dominate the news. Remember that readers make the Record what it is – the Record needs to think of the public interest, reporting the news rather than ignoring it to benefit the special interests (e.g., tree-killing “developers,” including national home building firms and ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD, all of which were allowed to behave "worse than any carpetbagger," in former County Commission Chairman Ben Rich's words, destroying what we like about our area, while avoiding news coverage and criticism),


7. Reach out to young people. Increasingly, young readers (e.g., by definition, anyone younger than me), don't like and don't read newspapers very much. This is your fault, dear editors and publishers, your newspapers lack a certain hipness and coolness. Listen to young people and let them tell you what they would like to read – news, not fluff (just like the rest of us).


8. Do market research and focus groups. Learn and use statistics.


9. Develop self-insight.


10. Start listening to people outside your narrow band of associations – there are more people to be listened to than the ones you may encounter at Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club and Flagler Hospital Board of Directors. 


11. Plan on developing more of a sense of humor. 


12. Embrace, as a sobriquet, “The Mullet Wrapper” (which locals have called the Record for decades. Use it in advertising and make clear you are trying to rise above the bad reputation.


13. Quit being so dull and pompous – it's a newspaper, not a church newsletter or the newsletter from some gated community.


14. Quit ignoring news you don't like – the rote omission of progressive local environmental and human rights victories from the news pages indicates a possible bias (akin to that brandished when the Record Editor once wanted to omit Democratic Congressional candidates from a League of Women Voters forum).


15. Remember that democracy is about all of us – let us in on all of what you know and can prove – people say the “best way to keep a secret in St. Augustine is to tell the St. Augustine Record.” No more secrets – report what you know.


16. Stop printing government and corporate handouts (press releases), which are almost never identified as such, and acting like you hung the moon when you do (“Special to the Record,” indeed – harrumph!)
What do you reckon?
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998