Below the Beltway

Lee Denmark

Publisher

The Battle Mountain (Nev.) Bugle

Dear Mr. Denmark:

Please accept my application for the job of editor in chief, an opening that was recently advertised in your newspaper.

You say you seek a person with writing skills and "a strong sense of community." Well, I think I am your man. I write swell. Plus, not long ago when I dropped by your town to do a magazine cover story, I got so strong a sense of the community that I called it the Armpit of America. When your editor playfully agreed, you fired her.

Well, relax. Your search for a replacement is over. I have long dreamed of having a job like this, because it seems to me the editor of a small-town newspaper can get away with just about anything.

For example, let's say the New York Times flatly asserted one day that President Rutherford B. Hayes was a horse. The next day, schoolteachers and librarians and historians the world over would be howling in protest, waving photographic proof, old correspondence, etc. The newspaper would have to run a retraction.

But if the Battle Mountain Bugle said it, who would notice?

In my view, this blessed negligibility confers great freedom upon a potential editor -- something your last editor, Lorrie Baumann, never took advantage of. No wonder you lost confidence in her. She kept covering news. She was obsessed with it. To the apparent dismay of your advertisers, she kept telling the truth.

I assure you, you won't have that sort of problem with me -- what with my seven Pulitzer Prizes, my doctor of divinity degree and my enormous personal physical endowment. Without being shackled to the truth, I would make it my business to protect your business.

For example, I would start dropping "facts" into stories that would please your advertisers by building up the town. Let's say we are covering a car crash. We could write: "The accident occurred at the corner of Front and Broad streets in downtown Battle Mountain, home of the World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks."