How soon they forget.

I received an e-mail from a business owner the other day that made me shake my head. I have reposted it here, but omitted his name to protect the ridiculous.

“Hey Paul, why not publish pictures of the new stores on Main Street, not just the ones that are closed????? Katie’s article and your pictures tend to chase away new business owners and shoppers, let’s try to be a bit more upbeat not DOOM and GLOOM”

The story was about the rash of businesses that were leaving Main Street in Annapolis. I was assigned to shoot a business owner who was closing up shop. While waiting for the assignment, I thought a cool slideshow idea for the paper’s web site would be to shoot all the empty stores on Main Street.

I made my shots, the story was the Sunday centerpiece, and life went on for me at The Capital. Then the comments started coming on our website. Some were about why shopping on Main Street was less than desirable; some defended shopping on Main Street. Some, like that e-mail, questioned why we would run this story.

Well, the answer is we try and tell both sides of the story. In nine years at The Cap, I personally have shot the new businesses moving in and moving out story many times over, even in the same store front.

This brings me to this blog post. My e-mailer must think pretty highly of my position at the paper if he thinks that I choose what we publish or even photograph. Sure, I have some say on how an assignment is photographed, but I usually work off an assignment sheet that tells me where to go and a general idea of what the story is about. Now if I had gone to Main Street and there were no empty stores or businesses moving out, I could not make it up, but they were there and I shot them.

But what made me shake my head was that the person who e-mailed me had a story and a photo in our paper a few short weeks ago about him and his new business that had just opened on Main Street.