Sounding Off:

On the last day of July, Editor Brady Rhoades wrote a melancholy column bemoaning the apparent lack of comments and letters to the editor on articles appearing in this newspaper (“Actually, we editors do have a clue,” Rhoades Less Traveled, Friday). He emphasized his angst by pointing out that recently, more people complained about the size of the crossword puzzle than took the time to write, pro or con, on important news issues.

I guess I can understand his feelings, especially now. The Daily Pilot has been under intense pressure from its owners, the Tribune Co., to do more with less. They are operating with about half the staff they had only a year ago. Some of those departures represented many years of quality journalism, including Publisher Tom Johnson, Director of News and Online Tony Dodero and, just a few days ago, City Editor Paul Anderson. That’s a lot of journalistic horsepower no longer under the hood, and a lot of institutional knowledge no longer available in the newsroom.

I think Rhoades and his staff need to take a little step back and think about this, though. We’re in an age where many of us expect instant gratification from — or at least acknowledgment of — our endeavors. We want to know that people read what we write — even if they don’t agree with our views. I think Rhoades and his team may have lost track of the fact that their job is to inform, not provoke. If, by informing, they provoke reactions from readers, that’s fine. But, they shouldn’t interpret a paucity of criticism as a lack of concern and appreciation for the news they present to us.

In the news business, there is a lot of pressure to meet publication deadlines. This makes the process of gathering, verifying, writing and editing the news a very frenetic event, every single day they publish. With the greater emphasis on the online side of the house these days, it’s possible to toss a breaking news story out into the ether many hours before it actually hits print — and for there to be a healthy debate in the comment thread before any of the print readers even know about the issue.

The Daily Pilot is a local newspaper — our newspaper of record for more than a century. We’ve become comfortable with certain elements of it — like the crossword puzzle, for example — and don’t really take kindly to big changes. We still want to see our kids featured in athletic events so we can clip the pages for our scrapbooks. We read it to find out about the size of the waves at the Wedge, not the cost of the proposed National Health Care plan — that’s an issue best left to the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register or the Wall Street Journal.

I read the Daily Pilot to see what my neighbors are up to, both good and bad. I want to be informed about how our elected leaders are making our lives better and safer — or not. I expect to get that information from the Daily Pilot. When I do, I don’t necessarily feel moved to fire off a letter or a comment on the blog — I just read the news, rock back and nod my head and take another sip of tea.

Rhoades and his crew do an amazing job, especially with the budgetary constraints under which they work. They need to understand that many, if not most, of us out here simply don’t take the time to tell them that. Buck up, Brady. We need you and the Daily Pilot team firing on all cylinders.

GEOFF WEST is a Costa Mesa resident.