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Dear
Editor:
I am so happy to see the return of the Saturday morning outdoors feature and the
other feature articles in the Union Tribune from the award-winning outdoors
writer Ed Zieralski.
Back in October, Ed’s Saturday feature went missing and a note in the sports
section directed UT’s readers to view the column in the paper’s online version.
Furthermore, the Sports Section’s Catch Report – a daily feature that has
reported fish counts from San Diego area sportfishing landings for dozens of
uninterrupted years – also went missing. Evidently, the UT thought that
reporting the results from the ATP Tennis Match in Mumbai, India and the WTA
Guangzhou open in Guangzhou, China were of greater interest to its readers.
I was dismayed and terribly worried at these omissions and hope they did not
portend the demise of outdoors news reporting in the UT.
San Diego receives a significant portion of sportfishing’s $9 billion annual
contribution to California’s economy. Our area is widely recognized for its
prized sportfishing opportunities and anglers from all over the world come to
San Diego to catch tuna and yellowtail from our ocean and record largemouth bass
from the area’s lakes. Their tourist dollars – as well as the dollars spent by
local outdoorsmen (and women!) – certainly impact our economy.
San Diego’s beautiful climate enables us to enjoy numerous year-round diverse
outdoor recreational activities including fishing, hunting, camping, hiking,
bird watching, water skiing, scuba diving, kayaking and many other outdoor
activities. Thanks to Ed Zieralski and your paper, outdoor tourists from all
over the world, as well as local anglers, hikers, campers, and hunters, stay
informed and can learn more about the many wonderful outdoor recreational
activities in our area. By reducing local outdoors coverage, the UT is doing a
disservice to the local sportfishing industry, the regional outdoors economy,
and our area’s citizens.
The recent wildfires again reminded San Diegans how powerfully the environment
can affect their lives. Awareness is education and without education, the
citizenry cannot make informed decisions about wildlife preservation, urban
development, wildfire prevention, recreational area closures – all of these
issues affect San Diegan’s environment, pocketbooks and even employment.
I thought all newspapers, including the UT, were facing the challenge of
retaining readership. If the challenge is to retain readers, please do this by
including interesting and informative outdoors content in the UT. Removing
outdoors content will drive the paper toward the cookie cutter sameness of many
corporate city newspapers and deny San Diegans a greater awareness and knowledge
of their outdoors.
Sincerely,
Norman K. Orida, PhD, MBA
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