Dear HCN,
Your recent issue on the
new Denver airport (HCN, 1/23/95) has caused me to conclude that
your standards of journalistic and intellectual honesty are about
on the same level as the slickness of your production. Never before
have I encountered anything in your paper where you are so wrong
(my opinion) and where it is so obvious that you didn’t even
consider any views opposing yours (which is what really matters).
Clearly the airport piece started at the mental destination you had
already reached (boondoggle, stupid developers at it again, venal
politicians thinking they can make the West something it is not –
nice themes on which you have figured out how to base your
journal), and then you invented a path to lead
there.
I know the piece on the back page was
labeled “opinion,” and I accept it as such, although it alone would
elevate my blood pressure. My only reply to the opinion is to
suggest that perhaps living in Paonia has isolated you from the
concerns facing those of us who live in the urban West. Gene Amole
and John Vanderhoof – a whiny old television personality and a good
ol” boy Western Slope legislator – this is the intellectual company
you apparently like to keep.
Did it ever occur to
you that now that the airport is nearly ready to open that perhaps
it is time to stop criticizing – no matter how you felt about this
project in the beginning – and begin to offer suggestions that
might pull it all together and make it work to its best advantage
for the region? Do you think it and the billions of dollars it cost
to build should be bull-dozed into
oblivion?
John
Lebsack
Denver,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline You abandoned your standards.
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