In just a little over a month, I will have spent a third of my career on the opinion side of things.

I’ve learned a lot in that time, especially from the sociological point of view I tend to employ. (I can’t help it; human behavior is fascinating!) When I was consuming mostly news (because I was editing it), I didn’t see why some people would get so upset about every little thing the president did (my career has spanned the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations, and someone is always ticked off). A lot of that had to do with me working during prime time, when “news” channels broadcast the bulk of their opinion programming (not that they’d tell you it was opinion).

Boy, did I find out once I started working on the opinion pages in July 2011.

🤬 Some people really don’t like fact-checking.

Because I spent so long on the news side, both in broadcast and print, I tend to approach things as I would a news story, which means that I check statements of fact. It’s one of the reasons I really love writers who fact-check. There were a few reporters other copy editors weren’t crazy about editing precisely because they kept checking their copy long after it was turned in because they wanted to make absolutely sure they got things right (and sometimes the line editor would write mistakes in to the copy). Those were the reporters who tended to have few corrections, so I never minded getting calls from them. (Since moving to opinion I’ve found that John Brummett is exactly that type of writer, and he tends to apologize for it, but there’s no need.)

But checking statements of fact in letters … hoo, boy. If I had a nickel for every person I’ve ticked off because I wouldn’t let them state as fact, for example, that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States or that Donald Trump ran a bordello in Nevada (two actual statements made in letters), I could probably retire fairly comfortably. Telling them to either attribute questionable things to their source or to make clear that it was their opinion just made them madder. (Did you make so-and-so do that? Well, yes, I did, if they wrote something that was questionable and not something already established as fact or attributed to its proper source.)

They believe what they’ve been told by their preferred cable and/or social media sources, so no mountain of facts with links to original sources will dissuade them; as far as they’re concerned, all fact-checkers are liberal propagandists (unless they happen to publish a fact-check they like; then they’re cool).

😵 Confirmation bias is very, very real.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s editorial page has long been conservative, which is why Media Bias Fact Check rates the newspaper as it does: “Overall, we rate the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Right-Center biased based on editorial positions that favor the right. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record.”

However, people who are looking to confirm their own opinions will take the presence of anything(!!) that defies that opinion as indication that we’ve gone full-bore hard right or hard left. The presence of exactly one liberal columnist (that would be Brummett, who rags on Democrats at least as much, if not more, as he does on Republicans) or a longtime Republican (Rex Nelson) who dares to critique what his party has become, for example, is too much to take for some. And how dare the paper use wire services that generally don’t give attention to fringe theories (George Soros must be superhuman to be able to do all the things he’s accused of) or stories that evaporate as soon as facts are checked, other than occasionally to provide context. (The media, including those wire services, was too quick to dismiss the lab theory early in the pandemic, but to be fair, the way it was pushed didn’t inspire confidence, thick as it was with racism and conspiracy. With someone in power who doesn’t feel the need to be at the center of every story, hopefully the origin can be investigated without all the kerfuffle.)

But, sure, the news pages are biased because they report the bad as well as the good on assorted politicians, whether that’s Trump, the Clintons, Obama, Biden or Bush. And how dare the paper’s opinion pages allow any opinion that doesn’t confirm my political beliefs! Gah!

Seriously, I’ve had people complain about all the liberal columnists when most of our columnists are right-wing (except for John and me, an independent; we also have one columnist who I can honestly say I have no idea about his politics). Most of the syndicated columnists we run on the editorial page (other than Paul Krugman) are also right-wing. Yes, we have liberal guest columnists, but we also have a lot of conservative ones, as well as a couple of libertarians. But yeah … not having the entire page be conservative is clearly an evil liberal plot.

🙄 You will never make everyone happy.

There will be lulls when we don’t get a lot of letters because people are on vacation or they’re not constantly wound up with contrived outrage (thanks, cable and social media), or because, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, a group claiming it’s under-represented will stop sending letters or will send letters they know don’t follow the rules. (Yeah … uh, I can’t print what I don’t get.) There will be people who count every word in letters with which they disagree and get mad if they’re not allowed the same number of words (it’s the inch-count, not word count that determines the space allowed). There will be people who complain … about anything; complaining is the entire purpose … well, that and claiming you’re being persecuted for your beliefs or that there’s some dark motive preventing you from being published.

What I’ve learned over the past 30 years (20 in news, and 10 in opinion … Lord, do I feel old right now) is that no matter what you do, someone will hate it. All you can do, then, is your job, and hope that the happy people and the angry people balance out.

🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

There is one more huge thing I’ve learned since moving over to opinion: People care.

Readers of my blog and my columns have gone through, with me, the deaths of my nephew, my beloved furry one, and my mom, and they’ve put up with my prattling on about my stroke, my IBS, my unquenchable passion for words, and my endless fascination with the effects of partisan politics on human behavior. In the course of things, I’ve also reconnected with people from high school with the same weird/wicked sense of humor and the same annoyance with politics as practiced now.

And they all let me know I was not alone.

They’ve called, emailed, sent me cards and letters, texted, and a few even sent flowers or books (they know the way to a nerd’s heart). They have offered advice and unconditional support, and some of them have become much-loved friends in real life (you know who you are).

For someone like me to be able to, even if only every once in a while, touch people’s hearts … it means a lot. Thank you for that.

It means even more, though, that I’m not the only one snort-laughing inappropriately. At least I know I have people to hide behind when we get dirty looks.