Lewis Grizzard was an old Southern newspaperman. And people used to ask him, “Why can’t you people at the paper be more truthful and accurate?” To which he’d happily reply, “Hey-it don’t cost but a quarter!”

In another story, a famous Chicago columnist is said to have carried around quarters in his pocket, which he gave to everyone who complained to him about the paper.

Although times have changed, and papers cost more than a quarter, people still hate us. Even in this little town where the college paper’s free.

So why do critics get so flustered? Where does all this negativity come from? We didn’t cheat you, you weren’t forced to grab a copy of The Red & Black. If you don’t like it – grab a book.

I guess people get mad for different reasons. Just look at yesterday’s mailbox. There’s one letter-writer, Drew Lewis, who’s actually pretty funny. He admits he’s posted comments online under an assumed name, then randomly trashes the paper’s “history of focusing on shallow stories and ignoring national and international events.”

Man, I love it when people criticize a local newspaper, with a University focus, for ignoring the current flooding in Southern India. Dude, go grab The New York Times – and have your $2 ready.

This is the problem at hand:

We at the paper have to build content that will be attractive even to people like Drew who post angry diatribes on message boards as “Kanye West.”

It’s hard enough getting somebody like that to read about what’s going on in the community around them – how could they be interested in the brutality of rapes perpetrated last week by soldiers in Conakry, Guinea?

I like to think, in my own sheltered way, that the majority of the students at this school really don’t share the concerns of angry letter-writers and online ranters. They read a fraction of the paper in class, do the crossword, and then go about their day.

And because that doesn’t make for a clever letter, we never hear from them.

I honestly do appreciate people who are willing to criticize us in writing, but please, have substantive criticism. A lot of people just sound angry, like they’re waiting for something to sound off on. Take Christopher Smith’s letter yesterday – I wouldn’t want to teach him in a class.

Saying we need to “stop the deification of college educators,” Smith slaps every professor he’s ever had across the face by saying they’ve probably had less life experience than a hot dog vender.

Wow.

This aspiring political scientist must have had some pretty rough professors. Is this the way we should look at education, as a service we pay for?

Down in journalism, we learn in part by hearing the experiences of our professors, before going out and trying it on our own.

So maybe I’m biased, because far from being experienced hot-dog venders, my professors have been face down in the mud during firefights in the Vietnam war, covered riots in Detroit and exposed lone-sharking preachers down in Florida.

And that’s just my department – there must be professors all over this campus with interesting experiences related to their own fields.

At least I hope so, because I look at my education as a two-way learning process between myself and my professors, and not as a “who owes me and who doesn’t” type of business transaction. I think it just goes back to angry people wanting to hate something, and there will always be angry people around.

Christopher’s probably just mad at somebody.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what your profession is, because there will always be negativity. People hate lawyers until a public defender gets them out of trouble, they hate cops until they hear their front door forced open at 2 a.m., and they hate journalists until one does a story about a business that’s been ripping their Grammy off for five years. So no matter what you do – do it well, and be proud of your work.

Let the haters hate on. I imagine this paper will continue covering local events, as it takes baseless flak from the small percentage of people who go through their lives finding things to be angry about. It’s definitely nothing new.

I once asked a professor of mine if there’s a special place in hell reserved for journalists.

“That’s been the consensus since Dante,” he said. “And I love the heat.”

- Marc McAfee is the online editor of The Red & Black