OPINION: Join in the discussion, debate

A couple of months ago, on Old Highway 99W, not far from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge south of Willows, and yet seemingly ever so far from anywhere, my trusty steed clicked past 300,000 miles.

When momentous milestones like that happen, you can’t help but to think back on the journey.

OK, so it was not that momentous, nor has the journey been for that matter, but it has been a journey, and one that started well before I purchased my car in 1994.

It is a journey that has it roots in watching Watergate.

It is a journey littered with elementary, junior high and high school newspapers, yet, a journey I didn’t even take full notice of until the baseball coach at Fresno State told me I was not going to be the next Johnny Bench, or even the Bulldogs’ next third-string Johnny on the bench.

When my mom said I could do anything as long as I wanted it badly enough and worked hard enough for it – she should have also mentioned that part about having enough talent.

I think I finally got excited about my journey when I interviewed the leader of a pro-Ayatollah Khomeini group – under a bench with Fresno police riot dogs literally snapping at my pen and paper, and attached limbs.

That bench was in the free speech area of the campus, which is important because of where the journey has taken me – and the changes in a career that are seemingly ever so far from its beginning.

I started writing professionally on a portable Underwood, the typewriter mounted as part of the carrying case – the original laptop, I suppose.

My office was the cab of a pickup truck, often in rest areas or at a table in the back of a diner or bar.

Today, it is computers hooked up to other computers and linked to the Internet and more information than I would have ever imagined, and all – not always reliable – available at the click of a mouse.

It is also a time when free speech can be ever bit as ugly as those snapping riot dog jaws – and exponentially more dangerous.

Yet, it is free speech, a right virtually all Americans will acknowledge as sacred, and yet, so many more want to deny others.

At its worst, the unpopular speech is vulgar and racist and wholly incomprehensible to the rest.

Undeniably, though, it is that unpopular voice that needs the most protection, because the rest will never enjoy the full right of free speech, if the worst is denied that same right.

Certainly comments on stories produced by Tri-County Newspapers over the last six months or so can be some of the worst in their tone.

That stated, accountability – while not expressly part of free speech rights – is part of the foundation on which newspapers have long stood firmly.

It certainly was that way when I pecked away on that old Underwood.

But the Internet has changed that, too, and not always for the good.

In an effort to bring some of that accountability back, Tri-County Newspapers has recently launched a new comment format by which contributors must register first.

It is not a cure-all, but it has already proven to be dramatically better than the old system.

Now, it is time for all those people who complained about the old system to join the debate, add to the discussion and raise a voice on the issues facing your communities.

For all its faults, the Internet provides an opportunity to exercise that freedom of speech in a way the framers could have never imagined.

My hope is that readers will take advantage of these valuable forums to express, educate and even enlighten others through their variety of opinions – popular or not.

By Todd R. Hansen
Managing Editor
Tri-County Newspapers
thansen@tcnpress.com

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