University of Virginia Library

Non—Events

I was intrigued by your reply of
February 25 to the letter of the
Young Republicans who
complained about not receiving
enough coverage for their
write-Hanoi-to-free-the-U.S.-POWs
drive. In your reply you said that
when one of your reporters called
up one of the Y.R. officers, he
learned that their letter writing
campaign was disorganized and that
there would be a meeting about it
that night. Therefore you said you
did not want to be bothered with a
non-event. This position seems
rather incongruous, because so
much of your reportage are
non-events.

If the Young Republican
meeting had turned out to be a
non-event you could have simply
reported what went on at the
"non-event", and then made a
cutting remark about it to elicit an
outraged reply. After all, reporting
on a Y.R. "non-event" would help
fill up some of your double spacing,
blown up pictures, and the like.