A Note Of Farewell
Years ago, when I worked at the New York Daily News, I had a busy day: two stories about CBS on the front page. They ran under a single headline that was, in my opinion, a very witty play on the title of the 1950s thriller, "Bad Day at Black Rock."
When I came into the office midday, there was a message on my voicemail from a reader, calling from the phone at a diner in the Bronx. Amazingly, I reached him when I called back. He had never heard of the film, let alone seen it, did not know that CBS' headquarters was called Black Rock and did not get that oh-so-clever pun. He was struggling to figure out if there was a racist intent, something he was pretty sure his beloved Daily News would never do.
I've thought of that conversation often in my last five-plus years as NPR's ombudsman). I answered his concerns. But the paper had a daily circulation at the time above 1 million; what about all those other readers who looked at the front page and had a similar reaction but never called?
