The Editor's Desk

Carol Randall’s response to my editorial regarding the city’s role (and lack thereof) in economic development contained a couple of sentences I found a little concerning:

“Economic development does not happen in a vacuum. It is a partnership with everyone living here, including the city, schools, and media. It is the job of all entities to promote their cities in a positive light.”

I’d just like to make it very clear to Ms. Randall and to anybody out there who might think that this is case, that it is absolutely not the job of the Desert Dispatch to promote Barstow in a positive light.

Our job is to provide information to Barstow residents to help them make decisions about their own lives. Our job is to help Barstow residents understand what is going on in their community. We absolutely cannot do our job if we take on the role of city cheerleaders.

We’re a business, too, and what makes our information valuable is the trust readers have that we are fundamentally honest. If readers perceive that our newspaper serves the interest of city leaders and not the readers, they will not trust us, our newspaper will not be seen as valuable to this community, it will not provide certain information that readers need to know, and they will probably stop reading.

I always find it a little saddening when anybody in the business community suggests that we should turn a blind eye to our problems. First of all, they’re asking for us to hurt ourselves as a business in order to make the “community look good” in the belief that this will benefit them (it won’t — people aren’t blind). Second, bringing problems to light is a pretty darn good way to start fixing them. The public discussion surrounding Measure D and our safety needs has no doubt been fostered in part by our willingness to put all the information out there that we’ve got, pro and con.