October 31–November 7, 1996

loose canon

Survey Sez...

I'm reading a book by Nathaniel S. Borenstein called Programming As If People Mattered (Princeton, 1991), which is strangely apropos for this issue of CP, known around the office here as the Readers' Choice "Thing."

Borenstein should have been a journalist — I find much of what he says about programming curiously applicable to the business of putting good stuff into a newspaper.

As an eloquent antagonist to the corporate "suits" who run most software companies, Borenstein distrusts the marketing mantra which claims that Users Know Best.

One chapter title should give you a taste of what I mean. "Listen to Your Users, but Ignore What They Say," is as good a piece of advice for journalists as it is for programmers, and highlights the mixture of cynicism and fascination that the staff of CP has about our Readers' Choice issue. To wit:

Readers sometimes don't know best, but they do know some pretty amazing things.

—Be thankful that newspapers are not democracies, because nobody would bother reading what everyone already knows.

There is nothing more important to newspapers than editors and writers who do and write exactly what they want without the least regard for demographics, focus groups or any of the other crap used by market-driven media.

After that, you might be wondering why we do this issue every year, and indeed sometimes so do we. Why is it that despite the fact that readers may be wrong, misguided or even lie to us when they fill out our "best of" surveys, CP has been going through the exercise of asking readers "what do you think" for over a decade?

I guess it's because the Readers' Choice thing does seem to embody — if not test — the rules by which we put together CP most every week: that we listen very carefully to our readers, but we will also question what you say.

It's not that we arrogantly dismiss what "the survey sez," but that it would be an even worse condescension if we went smilingly along with the majority without giving our own recommendations about the city's worst and best. We figure if you only wanted to know what the majority thinks you wouldn't be reading CP in the first place.

And as I said, good newspapering is not a democratic process.

Of that you can be thankful — especially this week when you go to the polls, and pull the levers, again and again, for the least noxious choice.

Pumpkin' Chunkin' Update

Despite my best efforts last week to ridicule the Pumpkin' Chunkin' into oblivion and keep you from clogging the highways, a bunch of people called CP and asked for dates and location.

Date and Time: Nov. 2 & 3, noon to dusk.

Location: Delaware Route 1, southbound, 12 miles north of Rehoboth. $5; under 12, free.

See, I also listen to readers. I just think you shouldn't go to the event. But if you do, maybe I'll see you there.