Letter from the Editor is a column about the newsroom, not my personal life, but I’ve experienced an unavoidable intersection of the personal and business sides this week that I’m using here to raise questions about how we do our job. My wife and I lost our golden retriever Ella last weekend, a few weeks shy of her 12th birthday, and we’ve endured the sob-filled week that anyone who has lost a cherished pet knows too well. I won’t relive the details here (please don’t ask), but I will say that Ella met the goal laid out in the current bestseller, Outlive, by Peter Attia. She was robust and able to do the things she loved almost until the very end and then cascaded quickly in her last two weeks. Attia’s goal is to help humans do the same, avoiding what so many live through now – a last decade or two of steady decay that prevents them from doing the things they love. Despite knowing that Ella’s was a life well lived, her loss broke me. Losing such a source of ceaseless joy and unconditional love left me with an emptiness that’s hard to bear. One way to cope is to find lessons in the pain, which is a long way of saying I spent a lot of time this week thinking about our dog while I was trying to work. I regularly compared Ella to Ferdinand the Bull, from the classic children’s book by Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson. If you don’t know the story, Ferdinand is a bull who refuses to participate in bullfights and prefers to spend the day under a cork tree, smelling flowers. Ella was the same. She had no interest in normal dog stuff, like barking and getting agitated by knocks on the door. On our walks through Cleveland Heights, when other dogs went berserk barking at her, she just watched them stoically, then turned away to sniff stuff. She was never mean. She was joyous to see people who visited. Nothing seemed to annoy her. In early 2022, she lost half of her lower jaw because of a non-cancerous bone tumor. From then on, her tongue hung low from the side of her mouth, and as she sniffed things, her draping tongue picked up dirt, leaves, snow or whatever else it touched. She had to work much harder to drink water because it dribbled continuously down her neck and leg. She never seemed to care. She was the same Ella, bounding happily through what life tossed her way. The thing that gets me about her is her only priority was to be with me and my wife, whatever we were doing and wherever we were doing it. She usually laid herself down in contact with one of our legs or feet, and she was in heaven when we scratched her head or gave her belly rubs, which we did often. I remain amazed that creatures like Ella walk among us, beings who don’t seem to know rancor and whose joy comes from being near those they love. I’d been thinking about Ella’s tender soul when I read reporter Sabrina Eaton’s latest installment in our series about civil discourse on Sunday. She wrote about whether term limits increase polarization in legislative bodies. High in the story, she quotes someone describing Washington as “fundamentally a total and complete disaster” because of entrenched politicians. I just shook my head. Sabrina’s story is a thorough discussion of the issue, with people making cogent arguments for and against term limits. It’s well worth reading. But with the image of our gentle Ella in my head, the disaster quote felt like pointless barking. We get a lot of pointless barking from people we cover. The Washington Post published a story recently about how the media jump on politicians whose speeches are about violence (Ron DeSantis on slitting throats) but pretty much ignore the apocalyptic doom that is present in so many political statements. Speeches have become binary. You can boil them down to “Elect me, because I alone can save you, but if you don’t, our nation/state/city will end.” Contrary to the quote in Sabrina’s story, Washington is not a disaster. The country has continued to operate through whichever administration you opposed. A lot of what Washington does works. Can it be better? Of course. I argue we should get rid of the party primaries in elections, in which a tiny minority votes, and have open primaries, where everyone can have a say. That way, I believe, we’d have stronger, more centrist candidates to choose from in November. Absent that, we’re thinking in the newsroom about how we can point out the apocalyptic barking – in hopes of curbing it -- without putting the statements into a megaphone. We don’t want to publicize nonsense, but we do have responsibility for reporting on ridiculous hyperbole. I asked about this in a text message I send out each weekday about stories in the works or questions we seek to answer. (Subscribe for free at joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn) I received more than 250 replies, almost unanimous in asking us to call out apocalyptic nonsense. People are weary of it. This is not just about looking outward. I’ve been guilty of using unreasonable hyperbole myself. And, unlike Ella, I do get annoyed, and I sometimes bite in what I say or write. I know I have to do better, and so, too, must our newsroom. We can help foster healthy conversations by publishing thorough discussions of issues and thoughtful opinion, absent the barking. Ella almost never barked. The last time was years ago. She communicated with gestures and facial expressions. She got her point across without the noise. As a newsroom leader, a week after losing our beloved dog and months away from a momentous political season, I’m left to wonder this: Can we take a lesson from a dog’s life about focusing on priorities, without the pointless noise? I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com. Thanks for reading. | 