“You are not stopping us. You’re not even slowing us down.”
In recent months, DigBoston street boxes around Copley Square and the South End have been vandalized several times. There’s a definite pattern.
And we are writing to ask the perpetrator (or perpetrators) to stop doing it. Because we assume that whoever is creatively decorating some of our main street distribution points is a frequent reader of our newspaper. So we figure that if we send a message here it will be received.
We understand that this person (let’s assume it’s an individual for grammar’s sake) has become exercised about something we have been publishing. And that said person wants to make sure that we are aware of this displeasure—and perhaps stop a few other readers from getting their copies of the Dig. Since our antagonist often takes the time to rip up a few issues after modifying the exterior of each box.
Therefore, we just want to say to our foil that there’s a better way to communicate with us and our readers. Just write down your grievances and send them to us for publication. We are happy to run opinion submissions from people that disagree with the articles we run—or don’t like our various editorial stances or our broadly left-wing and libertarian political orientation. You can explain what you don’t like and why you don’t like it. You can take your time with your analysis and try to make the strongest case you can.
Perhaps once we read what you have to say we’ll even agree with some of it and modify some practice of ours. We’re the first to admit that we’re not perfect and that we make mistakes like everyone else.
That said, we want you to understand something: You are not stopping us. You’re not even slowing us down. Whatever it is about us that you don’t like, as things stand, we could care less. You don’t start any kind of useful transformative conversation in a democratic society by throwing a public temper tantrum.
So it’s your choice. You can continue to throw paint on our boxes and rip up some papers. But it’s easy for us to clean them, and we print tens of thousands more copies of every edition that you will never touch. Not to mention our tens of thousands of regular online readers that you affect not in the slightest.
Or you can do the right thing. The adult thing. And send in an opinion piece to editorial@digboston.com. Use a pseudonym if you like. Or not. Feel free to tell us who you are and tell us what’s bugging you. We’re not going to the cops. Although if you keep trashing our boxes, we’re not going to shed any crocodile tears when you eventually get busted either.
To our other faithful readers, we’ll just say that if you want to toss some extra coin into the kitty to cover the costs of cleaning up our good friend’s mess that would be much appreciated. Donations always gratefully accepted at trypico.com/digboston. Thanks!
CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
JOHN LOFTUS, PUBLISHER
JASON PRAMAS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
