Bloomington Herald-Times, February 21, 2009
To the Editor:
Despite being given a month's notice, the Herald-Times failed to cover the Rally for Life, an annual protest against abortion that consistently draws 150 people to the county courthouse in freezing temperatures. The H-T can spare a reporter to cover silly stories like someone shaving his bushy eyebrows, but cannot manage to cover this event.
If the Indiana Daily Student can send a reporter to the Rally for Life, then the H-T can too. The H-T covered only one out of the last three rallies, having also ignored the 2007 event despite covering what the reporter described as a "last minute" MoveOn.org protest a few days earlier that drew a tiny fraction of the Rally For Life crowd.
Another way the H-T can improve the quality of its website is to require that each person posting on HeraldTimesOnline.com comment sections provides a real first and last name. It is hardly honorable to shoot from the shadows, and if people are held accountable in a public forum for what they write there will be much less nastiness and filth. At the very least, HTO should assign a unique username to each account to put an end to the "multiple handles" silliness.
Scott Tibbs.