Coda
'Concerned Citizen' is still busy writing letters

Greg Bean I've been getting a lot of letters from Concerned Citizen lately, and I wish he or she would just stop writing and save themselves the postage.

In the nearly three decades I've been in journalism, Concerned Citizen has written me dozens, maybe hundreds of letters. And he or she even seems to follow me from place to place. I've gotten letters from Concerned Citizen in every state I've worked, but I can tell it's the same person writing because the letters have several things in common.

First, Concerned Citizen always wants to say something snarky or mean about another person, but doesn't want to sign his or her real name and accept responsibility for the snarkiness - thus the nom de plume. Second, Concerned Citizen always claims to represent many other Concerned Citizens. Third, Concerned Citizen usually wants me to investigate the anonymous charges he or she is making (usually with no evidence), or take some other action, like writing about the situation in a news story, editorial or column. Fourth, Concerned Citizen would like me to publish his or her anonymous letter. And fifth, Concerned Citizen never seems to be a very good speller.

When I first started getting letters from Concerned Citizen, I naively thought he or she wished to remain anonymous because of the fear of retribution. Over the years, however, I became convinced that almost without exception, Concerned Citizen is really something of a coward. Concerned is the type of person they called a back shooter in old cowboy movies, kind of like those cyber bullies who post their anonymous vitriol on message boards like the one operated by N.J.com., but don't have the guts to spew their venom if they have to own up to it. Although Concerned Citizen is mad about a lot of things, and seems to have strong opinions on nearly everything, he or she is most concerned with protecting his or her identity so he or she won't have to deal with any unpleasantness resulting from their letters.

In the last few months, Concerned Citizen has written me about outrages and corruption in Edison, Woodbridge, Middletown, Hazlet, East Brunswick and Howell.

But Concerned Citizen - most recently signing his letters as "A concerned citizen of the town of Keyport" - has kicked it into gear over the upcoming sentencing of former Keyport Mayor John Merla.

As most people around here know, Merla recently pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and his sentencing is scheduled for May 8. And recently, we published a story concerning a letter he'd written to people around town asking them to write nice things about him and send them to the judge who will impose his sentence.

I'm sure some people wrote those nice letters about John Merla, but requests like that are a double-edged sword. There are lots of people out there who wanted to write nasty things about him for the judge to read as well. A couple of those came to the newspaper with the author's name and phone number included, and after we verified the letters we ran them in the paper. A number of those letters, however, were from Concerned Citizen and not only did we not run them in the newspaper, I didn't even read them all the way through.

Our policy is, we never run anonymous letters to the editor at Greater Media Newspapers, and we don't plan to start anytime soon. Except in the most extreme and well-considered circumstances - say if quoting someone by name would subject them to actual physical danger - we don't quote anonymous sources in the newspaper, either. On the few occasions when we've quoted an anonymous source in a news story, it's only after a lot of discussion about how we can find a way to use the quote with the name attached. I can only think of a handful of times we've quoted an unidentified source in over a decade.

So here's the deal, Concerned. We never publish letters from you and we seldom even read them. Usually, we throw them right in the trash bin as soon as we see your name at the bottom of the letter.

Just for the record, we seldom talk on the phone with people who won't tell us who they are, either. So if you're thinking of calling instead of writing, don't bother.

It'd just be a waste of time.

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I almost hate to bring them up, because of all the nonsense that happened last time I did it, but another entity I wish would lose our number is New Jersey 101.5 FM Radio.

Recently, the station faxed us a press release about a current promotion, a low-class deal they call "Operation La Cuca Gotcha."

Their initiative, which is running now and is intended to coincide with the Cinco de Mayo celebration, encourages listeners and (our old friends) "concerned citizens" to report illegal immigrants - by calling the Jersey Guys staff, federal government hot lines or by sending an e-mail to the radio station.

The object of this program is apparently to get the day laborers waiting in the cold for work at places like the muster zone in Freehold arrested and sent back to where they came from. And in order to make that happen, the station wants their listeners to become snitches and stoolies for the feds. Anonymous stoolies, of course.

Nice.

We've got a real problem with illegal immigrants in this state, and nobody would deny that. But something as stupid and offensive as "Operation La Cuca Gotcha" will do absolutely nothing to solve it.

It will not make us one bit "safer" as the station suggests. It only feeds from the vein of ugly racism that lies much too close to the surface in parts of New Jersey, and provides both affirmation and expression for that bigotry and lynch mob mentality.

I'll say this for the Jersey Guys, however. I deplore a lot of the things they say and do, but at least they have the guts to stick their names on their work.

Not that they should be proud of it.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.