News bits in 10 words or less
I wanted to like Ann Coulter's work. Her best lines make me laugh out loud. A recent example was her bit that suggested slogans for the Democratic candidates for president (Kucinich: ".001 Percent of America Can't Be Wrong!").
The problem is her worst lines, which make me - and many others - absolutely cringe. Because of her repetitive, tasteless "jokes" about minority groups, we have dropped her column from The Press-Enterprise.
We brought Coulter aboard last month as one of 13 fresh voices; the basic idea was to add vitality and diversity to our pages. Coulter joined the mix because several of our editors liked her vigor and candor even if we didn't necessarily agree with her views. Her sample columns did not contain offensive material, and we expected her writing to meet a more professional standard. We took a chance on a firebrand writer, and it didn't work. We're not afraid to admit our mistake, and fix it.
Readers should not take this to mean that conservative or provocative writers will be shoved from our pages. We'll continue to publish a range of columnists from across the political spectrum, and we will replace Coulter with that standard in mind.
However, we will not harbor columnists whose work is threaded with invective.
Reach Gale Hammons, editorial page editor of The Press-Enterprise, at 368-9408 or ghammons@pe.com.
