Paper is just doing its job

I hate parks. Did you know that?

Me neither.

Apparently, though, the printing of letters on Bill Ficker’s proposal for a new Newport Beach city hall on Avocado Avenue has demonstrated this paper’s anti-open-space policy. More specifically, since my name was on the unusual front-page Readers Respond we ran Friday, I’ve heard I’m getting some personal blame for forcing the City Council to look at the 12 acres of land that are set to be a park.

I love the idea that I, or even the paper, have that much influence. Really. But I think it’s more likely that all the e-mails the paper received ? plus the untold number of e-mails the members of the Newport City Council got ? had a lot more to do with Tuesday night’s council decision to look at the Avocado Avenue site than anything else.

All told, by the way, at this point the Pilot has received 65 e-mails or calls for Ficker’s plan, and 14 against it. And that doesn’t count the 35 e-mails we’ve seen from the Corona del Mar Residents Assn., which has been split on the issue.

Most of the response that is against Ficker’s plan, for what it’s worth, started coming in later than the supportive ones.

One letter-writer wondered what “overwhelming response” meant. One hundred or so responses to a single question is a strong reaction for us, especially in just a week’s time. It may not represent a huge percentage of the people who live in Newport Beach, and it certainly isn’t anywhere close to scientific, but it was enough that I thought: “Wow. This really has struck a chord.”

Because of that, and because we had limited time to run responses before Tuesday’s council meeting, I put some of the responses out front on Friday. Looking back, I think I should have run fewer editorials on Sunday and run more responses. (The paper has done just that today on the Forum page.)

Community response, after all, is the most important part of any discussion that takes place in the paper or on any issues. During the past week, readers have had the chance to hear what dozens of their neighbors (and one member of the Newport Beach City Council) think about Ficker’s proposal.

In the coming days, you’ll have the chance to hear from dozens more, especially now that the council will look at the plan, giving the issue extended life. All ? with the exception of any editing for space ? have been printed in the order they were received. (Jan Vandersloot’s letter is still to come, in other words!) There’s been no effort to print letters that were particularly for or against the plan. We haven’t slanted a thing.

In other words, we haven’t been stirring up controversy. I think we reacted properly to a push of opinion in the community. Not printing all that response, not getting the word out to readers (and, yes, perhaps city leaders too), would have been a failure in our duty to provide this community full, complete coverage of the news.

During the past week, we let readers know that Ficker’s plan had generated a lot of response, and we let readers know what that response was.

That’s the Pilot doing its job.