I’ve finally caught up on email and phone calls after vacation, and a couple calls and letters caught my attention. A few readers were mightily angry that the newspaper June 6 had nary a story noting the 64th anniversary of D-Day.
Frankly, I’m wrestling with what I think about that. Did we commit a foul, or is unreasonable to expect that every year (until when?) the newspaper will run a story reminding readers of the Normandy invasion. I’m fascinated by World War II history and have studied the war in depth. So I’m not coming from a place of ambivalence about the war – the opposite is true.
Is it news every year? Some years, it’s easy to make a case that a historical event is newsworthy – the 50th anniversary, the 75th. Is every year noteworthy? Maybe it truly is an expectation of a majority of readers that every year the newspaper takes note of the historic event. We get similar angry calls on the few occasions we’ve failed to publish a story about the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Which historical events qualify for unending annual coverage? Do readers expect us to be as much historical mile marker as we are a journal of the immediate day’s news?
For now, I don’t have the answers. Just pondering the questions, and the intensity of the anger accompanying the complaints.