Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 There was an article about dogfighting in the Sunday paper. It was a decent article about dogfighting, because it portrayed dogfighters in a negative light. It didn't really say much about pit bulls, just some characteristics that are valued by fighters and such... No negative press in the sense that there was no mention of pit bull attacks on humans, but I had issues with it anyway. In large part, because of this [img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0WQDqAu0c40!SoXYrz1AoPt5D3WowB7C2H1IHBrGuCVMyQL3wiR7AMtzTdLGwo1AiLxSSmugcMZZcZmRFSayMr1hu6riNDpskEZ8OURBUgqHbPuJ512LAmvqASLP1SxE2nVcht6VoUHM/pitbullarticle.jpg?dc=4675455311784839026[/img] since that picture just fits every dogphobic person's fear of what a pit bull is. And nowhere in the article was anything remotely positive said about the APBT. Despite the fact that it's apparently an AP article, I can't find it printed anywhere online so you can read it, but I took some pictures of it with my digital camera. I'm not going to post the pictures here, because they're huge (1536 x 2048), but I did upload them to my album here: [url]http://groups.msn.com/Dog-O-Maniaphotohosting[/url] if you want to read it. Anyway, I decided to write them a letter. So if you guys can read it and tell me what you think of it... any comments or suggestions, or whether it's just not necessary, since the article was not about pit bulls themselves... whatever you want to say. I don't even know if it'll get published, since it's kind of long... But here it is: Bravo, the media has done it again. You Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kendalyn Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 I think your letter is articulatly written and well thought out. I think you should send it in because even though the article may not have been distinctly about pit bulls, when people think of dog fighting, this is the breed that is first mentioned. Plus, the picture that they chose to put along with the story brings the breed into play whether they meant to or not. Here is my only critique and it is because of people that may not read carefully, not because of your writing: [quote] Pit bulls naturally have tendencies toward dog aggression[/quote] I would change it to "tendancies toward aggression against other dogs" or something like that only because the public may not know that by dog aggression you mean against other dogs. They may read it and think it means aggression in general. You do go on to explain it in the paragraph so you could leave it if you want and your letter would still be just as good. Let us know if it is published! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GIXXSTER Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Great! What I may change is what Kendalyn said and maybe add in alittle info about well known and great APBT [url]http://www.understand-a-bull.com/HeroicPitties.htm[/url]. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
courtnek Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 one other thing...the forerunner of todays Pit was bred to be animal aggessive by hunters, who used them to hunt bears, bulls and boars. I would add that, because any inaccuracy will be followed up by them and twisted to suit their needs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kendalyn Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 BTW, have you ever written a letter to the opinion section of the paper? They will edit it. Don't expect to see your letter printed verbatim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malamum Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Excellent letter. I think you should send it off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 courtnek - I knew that :oops: I'll work it in. kendalyn - I'll work on that, too. And yes, I've been published several times, and they always tell me how they're going to edit it, make sure I agree with it. If they mess with it too much, I'll scrap it, because if'd I'd wanted it to be three paragraphs, I'd have written three paragraphs. Should I cut it down a whole bunch? Image - I thought about it, but it's already pretty long, plus I just, umm, added two more paragraphs: "Perhaps the biggest overlook of your article is the fact that you didn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kendalyn Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 See if you can get a guest column. Then you can really give the issue the attention it deserves. If you can't, ask them for a word limit and rewrite/edit based on that. But send it in full length and ask for it to be a guest column. That would be the best! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Okay, okay, you convinced me ;) I'm going to just write the whole thing, as long as I need it to be, and I'm going to ask that if it's too long for them to publish, contact me and I'll edit it myself. Image, I'll go through the link that you sent me and this one, which I was originally looking at: [url]http://pbrc.net/petbull/pospress.html[/url] I think they overlap a lot, and they may all be the same, I haven't looked too closely yet. Thanks for the comments :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Here's what I'm sending in right now: Bravo, the media has done it again. You Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GIXXSTER Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 Excellent! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kendalyn Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 yup, I like it a lot! Very good job! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 I was kind of kidding when I thought I could get a spot as a "Guest Writer," but... [size=6][color=red]They Did It!!![/color][/size] Yep. I sent the letter last night, and today when I came home for my lunch break, I had a message to call back the editor, so I did, even though I knew I only had half an hour to eat. We had a long discussion, and he read back my letter to me, with some cutting done by him. I wasn't following along with my original (I was kind of pacing around thinking "I'm getting published... I'm not getting lunch... I'm getting published... etc.), but it sounded all right on the phone. I decided I'd go ahead and trust him to do his job and edit, lol. He seemed pretty surprised to find out that I don't have a pit bull. He was expecting to put that I'm a pit bull owner in the little one sentence "bio" at the end of the column. So we talked a bit, and I'm still not sure what he's going to end up putting there :) It's going to be published in Sunday's paper because that's the only day they have the "Guest Writer" column. I have to go in tomorrow and get my picture taken. I hate getting my picture taken. I wish I did have a pit bull, because maybe then I could get them to use a picture of it, or at least both of us. Oh well. Oh, and my mom was nice enough to nuke something for me, which I quickly ate on the way back to work ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kendalyn Posted January 13, 2004 Share Posted January 13, 2004 :smilecolros: THAT IS SO AWESOME! :smilecolros: You'll have to take a picture of the article or something so we can see it! Does your paper have an online edition? Congratulations on being published! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malamum Posted January 14, 2004 Share Posted January 14, 2004 Well done, that is excellent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
courtnek Posted January 14, 2004 Share Posted January 14, 2004 GOOD JOB!!! LOVE THE LETTER!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mutts4Me Posted January 15, 2004 Share Posted January 15, 2004 Thanks :D Today I went in to have my picture taken, and I got to chatting with the photographer, and it turns out he's the one who took that picture of the snarling pit! It was an AP article, and 2/3 pictures came with it, but my newspaper added that picture (which was from a fight in my city) and a few sentences about Flint's dogfighting problem. He said that he'd taken the picture "of a 4-year felony in progress" and had committed a 4-year felony by doing so. I was pretty impressed at the knowledge that dogfighting is a 4-year felony here, since in some places it isn't even a felony. He then told me all about the whole entire project he'd been working at the time, about how one of the biggest drug dealers in the city of Flint had repeatedly been caught with evidence of dogfighting - bloody dogs in his car, training equipment on his property, etc - but the county's Prosecutor refused to prosecute him, for whatever reason. Eventually, the FBI stepped in and took care of it, though. After our conversation, I felt bad for attacking the use of his picture in my letter, because I do understand the necessity of showing the horrors of dogfighting. It just added to the "killer" image without another perspective to balance it. Well. I'll scan the letter on Sunday. The Flint Journal is published to some degree online, but I'm not sure if the editorials are online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GIXXSTER Posted January 15, 2004 Share Posted January 15, 2004 Please give the link if it can be viewed online. Other wise I'll send you the money for a paper and to have it shipped to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted January 15, 2004 Share Posted January 15, 2004 Great googa mooga! i missed the entire thread. Well lets see: 1. great letter 2. it sounds good 3. great job on getting published also i have to say that i think that thing that really works well is that you dont own an APBT. of course people that have them will fight to show they are not dangerous....but they expect that. when a non-owner steps in and agrees its a glorious thing. Great job :black: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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