Editorial: We blew it

Talk about it

When something goes wrong, it’s easy to point fingers. He goofed, she goofed, you goofed. Your mistake!

Sometimes these editorials are used to point out perceived mistakes made by our schools, local governmental bodies and state lawmakers.

But this newspaper also makes mistakes. Upon request from a source or when we catch notable errors, we publish a correction or clarification the following week.

Last week a Valentine’s feature story on the long-married local couple Karen and LeRoy Larson appeared on the front page. However, several paragraphs were inadvertently left off as the pages were printed.

Thus, the story published for Journal readers had several disjointed paragraphs caused by the omissions. We felt badly for the Larsons. They were gracious enough in the first place to do the interview.

Therefore, this week, the entire story with the left-out parts appears on page A5. We goofed, big-time, and decided to devote adequate news space so both the Larsons and our readers can see the story we intended to present.

This also seems like the time to again bring up the topic of letters to the editor.

Letters can either be dropped off at the Journal, 2815 Prairie Drive, or sent by postal mail to our River Falls address.

Most Journal readers, however, email letters these days. If you do that, send them to rfjeditor@rivertowns.net.

We ask that you keep your letters to a maximum of 300 words. That will force you to be concise. We prefer topics that are local but the ultimate choice of what to write about is always yours.

Include the city or town where you live and a phone number so you can be reached if your letter needs clarifying.

And please do write. Your many letters breathe life into the Journal opinion pages and bring focus to what is important for our community.

Tags: opinion, editorials, letters