My Two Cents Worth It’s written in the stars

Love at first sight, the destiny of a gifted talent, the psychic ins and outs of astrology all are as they say, “written in the stars”, but at least one of these – astrology - may no longer be “written” in the St. John News.

A while back I had a reader ask me why we don’t run an astrology column anymore. I replied that I hadn’t really thought about it, didn’t have access to any, and didn’t really have space for it anyway.
However things changed. A spot opened up on the op/ed page that needed to be filled. The content package we purchased for the new comics page had an astrology column available, and I thought about it.

I like astrology. I’m not one of these people that plan my life around the cosmic shifts in the stars. To me it’s kind of life getting an extra free piece of toast with my Denny’s breakfast platter, a nice pick-me-up for the start of my day. They’re almost always up beat, and good for putting a little smile on your face for a second or two before you move on to the next piece of news so I decided to use Bernice Osol’s Astro-Graph as a space available “filler” item for the opinion page. If there’s room I run it, if there isn’t I don’t.

Life was good. It was written in the stars, and Bernice told me about it.

A few readers stopped me in the grocery store and on the street to mention that they liked the new addition and life was good. Then one morning I opened an e-mail from the mothership.

“Please do not run Astrograph's in your paper.”

Bernice didn’t warn me about this.

Surely, this must be a mistake. With the exception of pricing, what’s an ad and what’s not an ad, as long as the readers were happy I was never previously censored on content. So obviously this was just a misunderstanding.

Through e-mails and phone calls, I began investigating in that sometimes-unforgettable way I do.
It was not a mistake. My new publisher didn’t like it, so we couldn’t run it.

Now as some of you may know, and my mother, teachers, military, and most authority figures in my life will tell you, I don’t do well with, “because I said so.”

Several phone calls and e-mails later I got from “because I said so,” to “it’s a poor use of space,” and at some time in the past, a group of ladies in Pratt complained and got it removed from that paper.

I’m not good with censorship either.

I believe in turn the page. If there’s something on a page you don’t like, turn it. While it may not be your cup of tea, to many it is. Don’t try to restrict everybody’s access to something that is within the norm for a given media, just because you don’t like it. Very little in this paper pleases everybody. If I start limiting content for personal preferences the paper could become very dull.
After several phone calls, e-mails and a personal visit, my publisher and I agreed to disagree on whether astrology is a free piece of toast with your breakfast or the gateway to devil worship, but we did agree to leave it up to the readers to decide so starting this week there will be an online poll, and a cut-it-out and drop it by the office poll in the print edition.

So whether you like astrology, hate astrology, or just think it is a waste of space, make your voice heard by responding to our latest poll.

Because while it may be written in the stars, it may not be written in the St. John News after this week.


Terry Spradley is the editor of the St. John News. His e-mail address is sjnewseditor@embarqmail.com