Poking the Press

There’s nothing like seeing your name in print . . . unless it’s seeing the media respond to something you wrote, as well.

Last Saturday, one of the editorial writers of the Portland Oregonian published a lead editorial objecting to a proposed ban on smoking in public parks. He framed his argument in terms of freedom and the rights of smokers to do as they please versus the “minor” health threat posed by secondary smoke.

I responded with an emailed letter to the editor stating that he had missed the point -- partly because the Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation is doing the same by promoting the ban as a health issue.

It’s also a much bigger environmental issue, I suggested. Plus, smokers have pretty much brought the ban down on themselves: If they had policed their own behavior, and properly disposed of their butts, they might not have attracted the ire of nonsmokers.

But increasingly, I see not only hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground in the parks, but it’s also all too easy to witness pedestrians and drivers at the wheel dropping lit cigarettes on the sidewalks and streets when they’ve finished with them.


Time was when newspapers were fat and they readily accepted a 300- or 400-word letter to the editor. Now they limit you to 150 words or less. I sent in almost 400 words anyway, and hoped they might use part of it.

I was taking in the sun on our apartment building’s terrace mid-day Monday when I received an email from the editorial guy at the paper saying they would use my piece as a guest op-ed column. I asked if I could polish and expand it a little, and he said sure. I had it back to him before 1 p.m.

The next day, Tuesday, my piece appeared online at the newspaper’ website, OregonLive … along with a direct rebuttal by the same editorial writer! Today, both pieces are on the streets in the print edition of the paper.

As one of my older, erudite friends who still reads the newspaper in its printed form remarked, “It’s the first time I can recall the paper being moved by a letter to make an editorial reply.” Another friend said she thought the staffer’s response is rather snarky. 

Guess I must have hit him where he lives, eh? Hard not to assume the editorial writer must be a smoker himself. Anyway, it feels like an achievement. We’ll just have to see where public policy takes us from here.