By
Kevin Clerici
Just before Christmas, I had dinner with my mother at a local Italian restaurant. We've gone every year that I have been in school. She always comes to Tucson for my birthday in April, but this year she arrived for an early graduation ceremony.
At dinner, a gentle-looking elderly couple near our table kept eyeing us, leaning closer to our table and finally interrupting us to say how refreshing it was to see a mother and son eating together, and laughing together. My mother, acting as proud mothers do, boasted to the couple about my recent Editor-in-Chief appointment. The wife smiled and instantly congratulated me.
In contrast, the husband's cheeks went flush. He leaned back and folded his arms. He appeared angry.
It came out that he had had a recent run-in with the Arizona Daily Wildcat and he instructed me that newspapers should know when to just leave things alone. His face reddened. He couldn't understand why a reporter felt the necessity and had the nerve to ask so many questions. He said that I could make a positive difference.
I smiled.
I took a sip of water and resisted the itching urge to defend journalists and journalism in general. I understand we are not a well-liked bunch.
But all we do at the Arizona Daily Wildcat is our job. We act with an overriding quest for accuracy, balance, and above all, objectivity.
We check into things, we talk to people, we make sure our stories are accountable. That way readers don't have to.
The Arizona Daily Wildcat, and the press in general, is not above the law. We are, at times, fallible. Mistakes do leak into the final copy, but we strive for clarity and the truth. We try to find what is interesting in a time when so many other activities invite the reader's attention.
Perhaps, some of the problem is the time constraints with which daily journalists (who are also full-time students) must complete their work. Most of what you read is accomplished in a busy newsroom. We don't have the luxury of every story going through four or five rewrites.
The gentleman went on to say that newspapers don't care about people's feelings, that we "news gatherers" always dig up the dirt on people and play up the outrageous and extraneous.
In a way, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for saying those words. Frankly, I had been second-guessing myself that I could meet this challenge, whether an amateur news junky at best was cut out for this demanding responsibility. In a sense, we work for you, and any publication like the Wildcat is a collaboration. We should feel pride in doing our jobs well and fulfilling our obligation to serve the readers well.
A paper doesn't exist without its readers (and advertisers, bless their hearts). And like all good employees we want to hear your input.
So please take advantage of the e-mail addresses and continue writing us letters (we do read every one of them). Share your story ideas, express your concerns, and know that we will continue to stir up the dirt.
Going back to the issue of special moms, the athletic community, and possibly the entire university, lost a mother with the recent passing of Bobbi Olson, the wife of UA basketball coach Lute Olson and surrogate mother to legions of current and former players. I watched Sunday's public ceremony on television. I enjoyed how the players called her Mrs. O.
I didn't know Mrs. Olson. But after hearing her pastor, and her closest friends and former players speak of her, I wish I had. I thought about going to the ceremony, paying my respect, albeit silently and out of sight. Those who tenderly spoke described her as an amazing mother, a genuine individual and an inspirational woman. She never put herself ahead of others, they said.
Instead, I called my mother, and told her how much she means to me. I think Mrs. O would have liked that.
