It’s funny how life goes around in circles from year to year.
One circle closed this month as a local resident of Buda wanted the Hays Free Press to run a guest column.
“Fine,” I said. “But I have to approve of it before it can run and it has to meet our specifications.”
It didn’t.
The column was lambasting one candidate, John Hatch, running for the Buda City Council. The letter dealt with an agreement that Hatch and his then-company had with the city of Buda to lobby Austin and the Legislature to get Austin to release some land in its ETJ, and whether Hatch had reported to the council about his work.
My response was that a report of some kind had to have been made, because there were articles in this newspaper about land in the ETJ and how its release came about.
I offered the column writer a chance to instead run a letter to the editor, taking out information that I could not verify. She declined.
All of this give-and-take with the letter/column writer made me think back to the time when Mr. Hatch himself came into my office, wanting me to report about the ETJ release exactly as he wanted.
That didn’t go well.
Mr. Hatch reminded me of that conversation recently, laughing at himself and his naive ways when it came to the press.
My response to him back then was simple: “Bring me a cashier’s check for $2 million, and I’ll hand you the keys to this newspaper and you can take it over and write whatever you want. But, until then, there’s a long line of people waiting to chew on my ass, and you need to get to the back of the line.”
He was shocked, and then smiled.
And then he roared with laughter.
Why bring this up now? Besides the local resident wanting me to only print her views, I want people griping that this newspaper only writes one side of a story regarding the county’s upcoming road and jail bond election to know a few things.
A group fighting Hays County bonds says that one person, my husband, tells this staff what to write.
Wrong. He doesn’t even know what is being written until it is in print, and I don’t attend staff news meetings because I don’t want to prejudice the reporters or editor. I deal with the editorial page and I make sure that there is money to pay staff and the bills.
And, another thing: what woman running her own business allows her husband to tell her what to do? We are not living in the 1950s. I do my job, and my husband doesn’t tell me what do write, what to do, or how to make a decision. In the same way, I don’t tell him how to run his business.
Which brings me back to the idea of a $2 million cashier’s check.
If this group really wants to control stories, then they need to buy their own newspaper.
