In Response...

Junior, the postman who delivers our mail in the Old Post Office, has his arms full these days. We get a lot of mail. A typical day’s mail includes other city magazines, such as Indianapolis Monthly, Atlanta, Louisville Magazine, West Suburban Living and Grand Rapids; checks from our subscribers and advertisers (thank you!); photos for submission to “Snapshots”; and comments and questions from our readers. Many readers take the time to jot us a note on their subscription renewal form or even their “Best of Evansville” ballot. Others compose a more formal letter to the editor. Very often, I will personally respond to the writer. Much of our recent mail, however, is of such broad interest that I thought more public replies would be appreciated.

It comes as no surprise, of course, that readers had strong opinions about “Price of Preservation,” our March/April cover story. We received letters from very angry supporters of the Preservation Commission and people outraged with both the process and the Commission. One angry writer insisted the letter not be used for publication. Seven writers permitted Evansville Living to reprint their letters in “In Your Words.” We received (to date) a dozen informal comments on Best of Evansville ballots citing the story positively.

Two readers took us to task for presenting a “very biased” and “one-sided” preservation story. The angry letter writer who asked that the letter not be published made several unsubstantiated accusations, though offering no specifics. These writers clearly were angry the story was written – period. I asked these writers to please tell me the specific inaccuracies in our stories and if we made mistakes, we will correct them. I have not heard from these writers about that. This was a carefully written and thoroughly researched story.

The angry writers refer to Evansville Living’s “views.” The writer of the unprintable letter challenged me to hire an expert to rule on the windows. Evansville Living has no “views” on this issue. We presented a story, with information gathered from the minutes of the Preservation Commission meetings and interviews with city officials, Kathy Oliver, Preservation Commission members and others in the Riverside Historic District.

Even the mayor weighed in. Sandra Hoy had interviewed the mayor for our stories. I should point out to our readers, though, that Mayor Lloyd’s letter largely refers to a letter Robin Church Wolf wrote to the mayor’s office – the content of which was not reprinted or quoted in our story, “A Troublesome Process.”

At press time, the Preservation Commission had met in Executive Session to discuss the Kathy and Orson Oliver case; however, no settlement had been reached.

Our sole objective with this piece was to produce a balanced story. I believe we succeeded. Readers can expect to see more of this type of thought-provoking story...



Read more in the May/June issue!