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ONE REPORTER READER SOUNDS OFF: OPEN LETTER TO THOMAS B. HENSON

GUEST VIEW by Jeffrey A. McCabe

Editors' note: Fair warning -- the following is satire.

Dear Mr. Thomas B. Henson,

I represent the typical citizen of the City of Niagara Falls and my ultimate parents, former residents of the City of Niagara Falls for well over half a century, and have been authorized by them and the Constitution of the United States (Amendment I, Paragraph I) to write you this letter.


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The most recent issue of your client, the Niagara Gazette, 6 November 2004, has a "news article" on its front page under the byline of Mayor Vince Anello.

This "news article" contains numerous political pontifications that are clearly intended by the Niagara Gazette and its ultimate parent, CNHI, to provide promotional advertising free of charge to a political figure under the FALSE IMPRESSION that such mindless drivel and numerous false pretensions of intelligent analysis is actually news and not political advertisement.

Based upon your client's long history of vitriolic indigestion inflicted upon we the people of the City of Niagara Falls followed by the termination of thousands of subscriptions to said client's publication, it is CLEAR that the Niagara Gazette has published said "political advertisement posing as news" knowing that it was purely political advertisement or that it recklessly overestimated the intelligence and integrity of the article's author or overestimated the tolerance and desire for baloney of the residents of Niagara Falls.

This letter is intended to be a fair warning to you and your client (The Niagara Gazette) that if you do not immediately charge the Mayor of the City of Niagara Falls the prevailing fees for running political advertisements currently faking themselves as news on the front page of your client's newspaper of record, prevailing fees to be determined by the local newspaper with the widest distribution (NOT your client's), and agree in writing never again to print a phony personal political advertisement misleadingly labeled as news, then we the people of the City of Niagara Falls will have no option but to protect the only local publication used for reading as opposed to bird-cage lining, namely the Niagara Falls Reporter.

Such action will include but not be limited to instituting an economic market response by the majority readership of this fair city bypassing the current offerings of your client, aptly marketed in boxes painted YELLOW. Furthermore, we the people of the City of Niagara Falls en class will entertain retaining representation to pursue compensatory and punitive damages from your client and yourself personally for gross misrepresentation of news as anything more than political advertisement donated gratis to a particular political figure.

Now, you did not even have to send me $50 to cover your noontime repast.

After all, you are apparently already "out to lunch."

Jeffrey A. McCabe


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Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Dec. 14 2004