There are a number of ways to get the word out about an important issue.
Someone might, for instance, call up their local newspaper with a story idea, or write a mass email. Or, to reach a wide audience, one might try advertising, like with a paid insert in a weekly paper—that is, unless that someone does not have the funds to do so.
The hunger to share something with the world probably explains why every once in a while, someone resorts to covertly sneaking their own insert into copies of Good Times. One such incident happened a couple of weeks ago, when some anti-vaccination propaganda was slipped into some of our papers on the stand at Santa Cruz Community Credit Union.
GT publisher Jeanne Howard says she does occasionally hear from a reader who found a flier promoting an extremist point of view. She has never heard from more than one reader per incident, presumably because it’s a tedious task to hand-insert fliers into newspapers just to tell people that you’re pretty sure 9/11 was an inside job.
“Still, it speaks to the power of print,” Howard says, stressing that these rabble-rousers are in no way associated with the newspaper.
More recently, a flier was put into GT stacks for an anti-vaxxer event at the Live Oak Grange. The ironic part is that the flier specifies that the forum may not represent the views of the grange, with no similar disclaimer about the newspaper the event organizers have hijacked—and then inexplicably makes a point of thanking Good Times.
We’ve tried calling the phone number on the flier, but we’ve yet to hear back.
.File Under: Stop
