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Blown Off

March 11, 2009

Two weeks ago I submitted a possible op-ed to the M.V. Times. It was an expanded and more temperate version of my February 19 blog about the "docu-soap" that's supposed to be made this summer on Martha's Vineyard. I e-mailed the Word file to both the editor in chief and the managing editor, who is also the news editor, because even when I worked for that paper it wasn't always clear to me who did what and it definitely isn't clear now. I didn't get an acknowledgment from either one of them, but this isn't unusual. It didn't appear in Thursday's paper, but I didn't worry about that either: often letters and op-eds submitted on Tuesday morning do make it in, but sometimes they don't.

I was surprised when it didn't appear in the following Thursday's paper. A round-up of online comments about the docu-soap story included a bunch of "it'll misrepresent the island" on one side and "we need the jobs" on the other. No hint that there are other ways to look at this, even though I'd explored one of them in my op-ed submission and posted a quippy version to the Times website:

Not to worry, people. Shows conceived and produced in L.A. tend to be about L.A., even if they're set somewhere else. What matters isn't who they cast; it's who does the writing, directing, and editing. Here in the Seasonally Occupied Territories we rarely get to tell our own stories to anyone but ourselves. Fortunately there are a few exceptions, like Susan Klein. These docu-soapers should hire her as a consultant.

So over this past weekend, I decided to submit my op-ed to the island's other weekly paper, the Vineyard Gazette. With a little tweaking, the piece held up pretty well. But as far as I could tell from the Gazette's website, the Gazette hadn't covered the docu-soap story at all. They might print my piece, but I preferred to have it run where the discussion was already happening. Not to mention -- well, I did work eight years for the Martha's Vineyard Times, and I still harbor this sentimental hope that from time to time it'll live up to its potential. I decided to resubmit my piece to the Times. This was my transmittal note. For me it's pretty polite. ;-)

Almost two weeks ago I e-mailed you a possible op-ed about the proposed "docu-soap" that Sam Decker wrote about. I haven't heard back from you, and having given it another read-through, I think the issues are still relevant. I'm attaching it again; the dates of the original story have been added but otherwise it's identical.

Please let me know if you're interested in using it.

I got a prompt and pretty polite response back from Nelson, the gist of which was that he doesn't look at op-ed submissions because Doug does the choosing and that I had Doug's e-address wrong. "I know you assumed The Times just blew you off, and you said as much in the comment you posted on our website," he wrote. This is true. "Apparently," he added (a tad snippily, I thought), "you never considered the possibility that you had Doug's incorrect email address." This is absolutely true. I never considered that possibility because in my 14 years online just about every misaddressed e-mail I've ever sent has bounced back with permanent fatal errors or some other variation on "undeliverable." I wrote back to this effect, a tad snippily but mostly conciliatorily, and suggested that e-mail sent to Doug's old address was going somewhere and maybe the webdudes ought to check it out.

Now I can't wait to see if my piece runs in this week's paper. On the Blown-Off Richter Scale, a short piece that took less than an hour and a half to write barely registers compared to, say, the blowing off of a novel that took about five years to write, but you've probably suspected already that there's some method in my madness here. The one-line contributor's note that I appended to the op-ed includes mention of The Mud of the Place. Maybe they'll leave it in? Maybe eventually they'll sit up and take notice?

I can't wait to talk about how although the novel's Martha's Vineyard Chronicle occupies approximately the same geographical space as the Martha's Vineyard Times, they are not the same. Heh.

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