Each day brings experiences that help to change the way we do things.
Young drivers make changes to the way they drive after experiencing car accidents or witnessing violations. And cooks learn to crack eggs into a bowl separate from the flour after contaminating a recipe with a bad egg.
Staff at The Daily Journal have experiences every day that either remind us of why we established policies or motivates us to review the existing policies and makes changes.
As the result of a letter to the editor submitted a week or so ago to The Journal, we have revised our letters policy when it comes to complaints about businesses. Now, we will contact a business prior to publication of the letter. We may still run the letter, but we will attempt to find out, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story. The call will also serve as a courtesy heads up prior to publishing the letter.
A letter submitted by Adam Smith, Ames, Iowa, July 11 discussed a pleasant trip to International Falls, calling the area “one of the most beautiful places on God’s green earth.” The writer, a veteran of the war in Iraq, went on to extol the wonders of his visit, saying of all the countries he had visited he had never been to a place more scenic and relaxing.
However, the letter went on to say that upon arriving home from the visit, the writer had found he had been charged on his credit card for a room at the Holiday Inn he had prepaid. After calling the business, he said he was transferred “to a machine” and called back, but was given a national company help line, which he called, and was promptly returned to the hotel.
We published this letter because it appeared that the writer had made reasonable attempts to rectify the situation. When he did not get relief, we assumed, he wrote the letter as a last attempt at resolution.
This letter appeared to be more than a simple criticism of the business or its services; it was a concern about payment.
What the manager of the businesses told us after the letter was published was that there was more to the story. To our surprise, the business told us the issue had been resolved just two days after the letter was submitted, and one day prior to publication. However, the letter writer didn’t contact us to let us know the issue was resolved.
The business also told us that it had more than made good by the letter writer, and we won’t go into detail about that here.
A simple call to the business for more information about the issue, and an email to the writer about the additional information, would have been wise on our part. We sometimes rush to get information in so quickly that we need to stop and ask ourselves whether it would be better to hold the information a day or two to get more information. In this case, it would have been a good move.
Publishing information quickly is important in a daily newspaper. But we must balance that desire with the need to get the full story, even when it comes to Opinion Page material.
What’s valuable about the experience is that it made us rethink how we do things and make changes to better serve our community.