Hot potato

Today’s story on transgendered father Kimberly Stankovich generated a lot of discussion this morning – here’s a general summary of the arguments:

The story was an overly-sympathetic portrayal of a deadbeat dad who could find work if he really wanted to, vs. :

The story was a tragic portrayal of how the system’s general inability to cope with transgenderedness is creating barriers for someone to fulfill her parental obligations.

And later on…

The story didn’t focus enough on the real tragedy – that the children’s needs aren’t being taken care of, vs. :

Although the story didn’t address the needs of the children directly, the information provided was enough to evoke a general reaction of anger that they aren’t being taken care of.

Other peripheral issues that came up included the age-old debate of this-would-never-happen-in-Seattle-would-it? and whether being transgendered is a personal choice or a core part of someone’s identity that can’t be stifled – of course, these discussions could go round and round for days without resolution. One editor raised the question of why this particular parent was jailed for failure to pay child support when others are not, and asked if we had looked at criminal records – something which we routinely, though not always, do.

Understandably, this was not a particularly easy story to produce – there was a lot of discussion of the aforementioned issues prior to publication, resulting in several rewrites. Today’s meeting shows there still isn’t consensus on the issue.

To lighten the load a bit, here’s a nice photo from the Palouse that Jed Conklin took:

7 Nation Army

There was a lot of praise for today’s edition of 7 – particularly Tom Bowers’ writeup of the White Stripes . Managing Editor Gary Graham, who until now had never heard of the White Stripes, said he read the article intently. Bridget Sawicki’s Lego-motif cover continues to draw raves.

Slight detour

Hey – did you hear that I-90 is closed from St. Regis to Missoula because of wildfires? The story was in the Idaho Region section, but didn’t make it’s way into the later editions.

One last thing…

The story on Millwood mayoral candidate Robert Paul Mankin might have deserved better play – it’s the number two story on the Web site today.