The Editor's Desk

A month ago today, I sneaked out of work a little early to go watch my daughter play a basketball game at Truesdell Middle School. Little did I know then that it would be the last time I would be at work for three weeks.

I slipped on the ice in the Truesdell parking lot and broke my left leg. One of my first thoughts as I lay on the ice was, "I’m glad I’m not a horse.” I had surgery at Via Christi-St. Francis the next day and spent the next few weeks at home recuperating.

All of us like to think we’re a pretty important person at work. Nothing like missing three weeks of work to dissuade you of that notion. Our business coverage didn’t skip a beat while I was out. That’s a testament to our deep and talented staff, and to the efforts of assistant business editor Dan Loving, who earned a battlefield promotion when I went down. My guess is that most readers had no idea that I wasn’t around. Like I said, it was a humbling experience.

I started working part-time last week and feel good enough to try working full-time this week. I’m still working my way through a lot of old e-mails. So if you haven’t heard from me be patient. I’ll be in touch.

Tom Shine

Some readers took issue today with our decision to run a story on Page One about Marty Spence, a WSU student who posed for a four-page photo spread in Playboy’s annual College Girls issue. A reader named Sheri asks: “Why would you consider a college girl posing for Playboy newsworthy, and why would you consider it front page newsworthy, at that? There are so many good, wholesome things happening in our community and I m disappointed that you would glorify pornography.”

She poses an excellent question. I’ll answer by saying we were not aiming to offend anyone with our coverage today, but we were trying to report on something that we deemed likely to promote interest and discussion in our community. The fact that this WSU student was selected from a field of woman at colleges across the country to model in a national magazine– in fact to garner a four-page spread– did seem newsworthy to us. Of course, it was not the most important story in our paper today. Should it have been our top story on Page One? No. Should it have been displayed even above the fold on Page One? I didn’t think so. But I did think that among the stories in today’s paper it is one of the most interesting. In selecting this story for Page One, we were not aiming to endorse what this young woman did, or to glorify pornography, any more than we are endorsing the actions of politicians or businesspeople or criminals when we feature stories about them on Page One.

As Ron Kopita, WSU’s vice president for campus life, notes in the story, Playboy has been part of American life since the early 1950s. It certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it is a part of American pop culture. Like it or not, this young woman’s actions will garner a certain type of publicity for Wichita and Wichita State University. (As the story points out, she got her start in nude modeling posing for art classes at the university.) This young woman, her family and her boyfriend (shown with her in the accompanying photo) are apparently comfortable with her choice. Not everyone would agree with that choice, but we thought it was interesting enough to report on so our readers could judge for themselves.

We do try to cover the "many good, wholesome things happening in our community" as best we can. I agree with Sheri that that’s very important, and many of those stories make Page One on a regular basis. I respect the views of the readers we’ve heard from today on this and again, am grateful for the valuable feedback.

Theresa