This morning's Virginia Gazette is full of letters and essays about Gene Nichol's resignation that are passionate and partisan and full of wild charges. The editors of our little town's "newspaper" (read "rag") love that kind of stuff! It provokes passionate and partisan wild charges in response, that they can print in the next edition! (And the really wild stuff that's sent into the "Last Word" piles on even more.)

In fact, the wildest charge in this morning's paper was actually produced by the editors themselves, in a "news" article. Here's a letter to the editor I just sent in. (Chances are they won't print it. They've never printed the letters I've written that have been critical of their journalistic quality in the past.)

To the Editors:
It's just the latest demonstration that the Virginia Gazette is not a serious newspaper: the fact that you created a top-of-the-page "news" story out of an anonymous phone call from a crackpot alleging a "conspiracy" ("Nichol called a victim of top Catholics who trapped him into bad choices"; page 5A, issue of February 16, 2008).
Good grief.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg