Over the past several years, I’ve been asked about working for the San Diego Reader, what it’s like, what’s publisher Jim Holman like, stuff like that. I’m a freelancer, so I don’t work in the offices, but I can say that I’m really proud to work for that paper (and I doubt anyone from the paper reads this blog, so I’m not just kissing up). I’m in a job where I am expected to stand for things, and as one anonymous person recently said in a comment elsewhere, “the Reader has consistently been [San Diego's] one source of reporting on insider deals without evidencing any fear of retaliation.”
The origin of the questions often has to do with Holman’s personal politics, his involvement in anti-abortion campaigns and whatnot. I can honestly say I worked for the reader for at least 3 years, probably 4, before I had any idea whatsoever that he had any personal political causes, and I only found out because the Union-Tribune did a story on him. Never had any of his personal politics even remotely crept into the work I was doing — and I obviously do very political work.
Unfortunately, since there really is nothing to attack the guy for, his critics often seem to just assemble lists of facts, hoping that these facts will look like they expose some shady underbelly of the San Diego Reader, when instead, they do the exact opposite and reveal the integrity of the guy running the paper.
Take the latest hit piece from Voice of San Diego’s Seth Hettena: Little to Read in San Diego’s Reader. It’s basically an attack on the Reader that substitutes lists of advertisers and story headlines in place of actual critiques (Hey! The Reader runs ads from cosmetic surgeons! What a bunch of losers!).
Hettena is clever, creating a scenario in which the Reader can’t really defend itself. It sucks because the stories are crap and they’re phoned in. Um, excuse me Mr. Hettena, but the paper has won plenty of awards for its journalism. Oh … well nobody cares about awards! The Reader sucks!
In one of the tastiest ironies from his column, he then goes on to say “Potter and the City Lights crew are obsessed with The San Diego Union-Tribune and its owner David Copley” — before going into several hundred words about Jim Holman’s religious evolution and faith practices, which are irrelevant to the story, as Hettena acknowledges “Today, you would never be able to guess Holman’s religious activism by looking at the Reader.”
He goes on to advocate that Holman should inject more of his religion and personal views into the paper. That would be great for Hettena’s column, because then Holman would be a hypocrite. But as it stands, he’s not. Bummer!
Perhaps the funniest dose of irony comes from Hettena’s argument that the stories lack any kind of journalistic merit or interest to the readership, being painfully far from anything resembling breaking news. “You would be hard pressed to know there was a wildfire here in October if you only looked at the Reader, and that’s the way it’s always been,” he says.
But get this – one of the commenters on the story dug up the fact that when Hettena was an AP reporter in 2006, not only did he cite the Reader for breaking a story, but the Reader broke the story nearly 6 months before he was reporting on it for the AP.
That’s often been the case with Don Bauder and Matt Potter. If they appear to be ignoring the big scandals of the day, it’s because they reported on them six months ago, when the UT was still hoping the controversy would pass.
One thing I’ve learned in this business of putting yourself out there is that it’s a lot easier to get attacked when your attacker makes himself look more foolish than you ever could. The only sad part of this is how bad it makes Voice of San Diego look. Reading through the actual facts provided by readers in the comments show the extent to which Hettena stretched and depths to which he sunk in his hyperbolic characterization of the Reader’s personalities.
The first time I met Jim Holman, he told me that The Reader is able to thrive because they can dig in to the stories the Union-Tribune chooses not to cover. Whether it’s reporting the ugly facts about the Padres Stadium deal, the continuing deception behind the pension scam, the Sunroad fiasco or the shadiness beyind the mayor’s charter reform committee, that continues to be true.