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Discover Mid-America — October 2009
Unwelcome dilemma
 |
Sometimes being a journalist can get in the way of being a businessman, and vice versa.
When I received an email from a reader recounting a “horrible experience” she had at a recent antique show and asking me — as publisher — to share “my story with your readers,” my first reaction was to do so. I had little doubt what she recounted happened. There was an authentic feel to her storytelling, grounded in emotions, both anger and fear.
She had asked to leave the show by a different route after attending the early bird session because of muddy conditions and had conveyed that wish to a person directing cars to the show. It was around 10 am, noted the reader.
As she slowly drove her car away, another man, which she took also as working the show, “started beating on my window asking me to roll it down and SCREAMING (her capitalization) AND YELLING for me to take the exit through the back of the property … he continued to BEAT my window and SCREAM at me. I was unbelievably SCARED and FRIGHTENED at this point and when I reached for my cell phone to try and dial my husband my hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t even dial the number.”
As she kept driving, the man yelled for her to never come back. “Well, that is a given,” she wrote near the end of her email.
She did try — “made several attempts”— to contact the show promoter and said she did tell her story to someone identified as an “assistant.” She described herself as an “antique enthusiast” in her email but felt obligated to share her story because she considered the treatment she got as “abusive.”
After talking with some people about the show she attended, and knowing the show’s promoter personally, the businessman in me kicked in. Discover Mid-America exists to promote the antique business and individuals in it. Our publication’s health directly depends upon the antique trade so I had to ask myself, “Would naming names hurt my business and potentially the regional antique business, also?”
I concluded it wouldn’t help. So I emailed the reader back saying I would mention her experience in my column but would not print her email.
She replied: “I do understand … My only regret is that the actions of this particular individual are marginalized for the good of the greater ‘whole.’ This is unfortunate.”
Admittedly, the greater whole had to do with my business. In my reasoning to her I wrote, “I must walk a delicate balance between responding to readers’ concerns but doing so without upsetting advertisers too much.”
The 30-some years I’ve been a writer and journalist nags at me that I’m copping out, that I could find out who the man is that upset this reader, get his side of the story and put it all on a page of this publication.
But that means that would leave the publisher part behind, which I can’t do.
For the record, the promoter of the show where this incident — as the woman told it — took place was an advertiser. But no longer, a fact unrelated to this woman’s story.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Refurnished Thoughts Archive — past columns
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