I’m back…Did anyone miss me?
Back in December, our editorial writer Paul Sunyak took a two-week vacation and suddenly the word was out that he’d been fired. We were inundated with phone calls asking what happened to Paul and what was the real story behind his ouster. People even stopped me on the street with various conspiracy theories, giving me their own versions of what really happened.
Paul’s supporters were livid. They demanded his return. His detractors were ecstatic. They were certain that he had finally stepped over the line and been shown the door.
To their chagrin, Paul returned from his vacation and quickly resumed his role of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Meanwhile, because of various reasons, I’ve been unable to write my weekly Sunday column since last fall and sad to say, there’s been no huge outcry or protest. So, what’s up with that, I wondered.
I’m sure most people thought it was too impolite to ask why I stopped writing, figuring I was just too busy or something personal had come up. That’s what I kept telling myself anyway.
At any rate, writing my column is one of the favorite parts of job, and I’m looking forward to pounding the keyboard again. Despite the muted reaction to my recent absence, I’ve received plenty of feedback on my columns over the years, and I look forward to hearing your comments about them in the future. I may not be able to write a column every week, but I’ll give it my best shot.
For today, I wanted to discuss our plans for election coverage. First off, as has been our policy for the past couple of years, we won’t be running campaign announcements. We did run announcements for the office of Uniontown City treasurer but that was only because one slipped through and made the paper. So, as a courtesy we’re running announcements from all candidates for that office. That’s it.
Now, we will be doing news stories on candidates running for county commissioner but those are different from announcements. We’re basically writing those stories ourselves and not just running a press release.
We realize that many candidates might not be aware of this change and will be disappointed once they find out about the move. But we had no choice. The task of editing those announcements, scanning in photos and finding space just became too difficult.
We also fielded complaints from candidates upset that their story appeared on page D-6 while their opponent’s story was on page A-6. There was no way to please everyone. Some candidates thought we were against them before the race was even started, and we ended up with a lot of hurt feelings all the way around.
However, we’ll still be covering the upcoming primary election from start to finish and everything in between. As part of that coverage, we’ll be doing preview stories on contested races in the primary.
While we won’t be running announcements, we urge all candidates to continue sending them in so we can use them as background information for the previw stories. The announcements should contain some information about yourself along with a statement about why you’re running for the office. A photo is also helpful. Don’t send in your only photo, though, as we can’t guarantee that they’ll be returned.
So, if you haven’t submitted an announcement, please do so as soon as possible. You can send them to the Herald-Standard in care of myself. The addresses for our offices are 8-18 Church St., Uniontown, Pa.. 15401, and 170 West Crawford Ave., Connellsville, Pa., 15425. You can also drop them off at one of our offices or e-mail them to me at mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com.
I urge all candidates to please respond to calls from our reporters. We’re just trying to get the your views so that voters can make an informed choice at the polls. Nothing is more frustrating than repeatedly trying to call a candidate who won’t return calls. You have to wonder if some of those candidates are trying to hide their views from the public. That certainly doesn’t bode well for candidates or voters.
In the past we’ve invited candidates in various races to come in and meet with our editorial board, and we’ll be doing that once again. We’ll also be holding televised forums for candidates on HSTV.
At this point, we don’t have any detailed plans for our election coverage. But Tuesday is the deadline for candidates to file for the primary election, and we’ll be looking over the field to see how many contested races we have and how to best cover all of them. Be sure to check Wednesday’s paper for a rundown of who’s running for what.
Don’t forget that you read that here first. There might not have been a clamor for this column, but I’m back, and I can only hope better than ever. If I go missing again at some point, feel free to stage a protest or organize a parade. After all, any reaction is better than none at all.
Mark O’Keefe is the executive editor of the Herald-Standard. He can be reached at 724-439-7569 or by e-mail at mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com.