0
OPINION
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Tuesday, October 20, 1981.
The Michigan Daily 9
Why are you reading the Daily?
I wonder why you are reading the Daily right
now.
I don't read this paper anymore, and I work
here. Reading the Daily this semester is like
driving down a winding mountain road at 100
mph in dense fog: You know you're going to run
into something at every turn.
It may be a typo. Or a misspelled word. Or a
grammatical mistake. Or a factual error. But
Howard
Witt
day. Instead, I wish to discuss the nuts and
bolts syntax of every story, the simple
mechanics of writing. Or, put another way,
why you will never learn how to write well by
reading the Daily.
Oh sure, the Daily has always been a haven
for typos and factual errors. But the problem is
especially acute this year. And the Daily's
editors are to blame.
We have a few editors who think spelling is
just a funny game-it doesn't really matter
whether you spell a word correctly, just as long
as the story is interesting, they say. So readers
are treated to "concensus," and "peak" in-
stead of "peek," and "loose" instead of "lose,"
and "consistantly," to name a recent few.
THERE ARE editors who think grammar is
that nice old woman married to grandpa. So we
get "As if holding down a full-time job and
going to graduate school aren't enough . .."
("Aren't" should have been "weren't;" it's
that silly thing known as the subjunctive
voice.)
There are editors who simply have no feel for
the English language. Witness this sentence:
"They're here, walking in clusters sporting
blue, gold, and green, proud with the confiden-
ce that God is on their side."
And worst of all, the whole crop of editors is
proud with the confidence that the Daily is a
good newspaper..
They don't like to hear their paper criticized;
they'll give you myriad excuses for any
problem you can point out. "It takes too much
time to find typos," they'll say. Or "if we
worried about getting every sentence correct,
we'd never put out a paper." Or the most
popular: "We don't have enough staff mem-
bers."
THE DAILY'S NEWS staff is so aloof to
criticism, in fact, that the business staff,
desperately surveying the typoed ruins, has
had to resort to public ridicule to try to solve
the problem. Today marks the opening of the
"Find the Typos in the Daily" contest.
Whoever finds the most mistakes in today's
paper will win a free dinner at a local
restaurant or a t-shirt or an album..
This contest has outraged most of the news
staffers and widened the traditional rift bet-
ween those who write the news and those who
sell the ads. In fact, there are enough conflicts
between the various staffs of the Daily to
provide fodder for an award-winning soap
opera. But discussion of the Daily's viscera is
not my intention here; I'm writing about what
you, the average reader, see every day.
LIKE THE LITTLE weather blurbs in the
upper-right-hand corner of the paper. Can you
remember a day when the Daily's weather has
ever been correct? Oh yes, back on September
19 I think it was right. Do you know how the
Daily gets its weather? At about 3 p.m.,
someone dials up the Detroit National Weather
Service tape-recorded forecast. Up-to-the-
minute accuracy-that's the Daily's policy.
Here's a lead paragraph from a story in last
Tuesday's paper: "The nine RAs and RDs who
don't meet the 2.5 grade point average
requirement will have until the end of the term
to bring up their grades before being fired,
housing officials decided yesterday."
And what happens if they don't bring up their
grades? Do they keep their jobs?
HOW ABOUT THIS for a well-written
paragraph: "To be found guilty of furnishing
intoxicants to a minor, the defendant must sell
the alcohol to a minor, and either the defendant
knew he was selling to a minor or he did not
make a diligent inquiry as to the age of the
customer."
Or here is a bit of wisdom from a recent Daily
editorial: "Citizens have the right not only to
print what they choose, but to have access to
read what they choose."
No, really? Can we say what we choose, too?
What a great country we live in.
Perhaps all my criticisms seem petty and
nitpicking. Indeed, taken individually, they
are-a newspaper, by virtue of its daily
character, will always contain a certain num-
ber of inevitable mistakes. Even The New York
Times has typos.
But taken as a whole, the Daily is a shoddier
newspaper than most. Everything you see in
this paper has been reviewed by twd
editors-that's about the saddest comment I
can make.
MAYBE WHAT'S wrong with the Daily is
what's wrong with most college students
today: They don't know how to write.
In each of my upper-level English courses
this term, the professor had to spend half an
hour reviewing basic English grammar after
returning a writing assignment. And I don't
mean anything so esoteric as dangling par-
ticiples or split infinitives--of course college
students can't be expected to know about those.
I mean "it's" versus "its" and "their" versus
"there."
So maybe, if I can take a moment to insult
your intelligence, you continue to read tht
Daily because you don't even notice the
mistakes. And maybe virtual illiterates flock to
work at the Daily because they see virtual
illiteracy upon its pages. "Hey, I can do that,"
they boast.
I guess in the end you could say I'm kind QJ
disgusted. I can get this paper for free, because
I work here. I can't imagine why you pay
money for it.
Witt's column appears every Tue sday.
0
a
it's going to be something. And you'll hit it in
practically every story. Soiny question is, Why
drive through all that? It's a much smoother
trip in the Free Press or The Ann Arbor News.
I'M NOT EVEN going to try to address the
Daily's coverage (or lack of it) in this column.
Questions like "Why does the Daily fail to cover
a speech by noted '60s radical Bernadine
Dohrn?" or "Why does the Daily fail to cover a
major international bicycle race held in the
heart of campus?" are better left for another
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
AT THE INAUGURATION
OF POLAND
\A\JUCIECH
S NE\N
JwRuZELSK I
CoMMUAPiST
PAFRT LEADER,)
I .I
Vol. XCII, No. 35
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
AND DO 1QU
5W EA R
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
Mubarak'
A NWAR SADAT had many
admirable qualities as leader of
his country. His efforts and willingness
to compromise at Camp David in the
quest for a lasting peace in the Mideast
will be remembered for generations as
one of the greatest accomplishments in
our time.
But there was another side of Sadat
that refused to compromise and
almost invariably preferred confron-
tation to negotiation. It was this ten-
dency that Sadat exercised in some of
his domestic policies. During the last
days of his life, Sadat continued his
fierce and often brutal crackdown on
his political opponents; chiefly
religious extremists, including the
Moslem fundamentalists who later
took his life.
Sadly, his successor, Hosni
Mubarak, has vowed to continue
promoting-almost indiscrimi-
nately-Sadat's policies, both the
good and the bad. In the two weeks
he has been in office, Mubarak has
arrested hundreds, maybe even
thousands, of his government's op-
ponents, who are again primarily
religious extremists.
Promising to deal "ruthlessly" with
his opponents, Mubarak, with a zeal
unknown even to Sadat, dispatched
security squads to arrest still more
dissidents.
Ironically, Mubarak is executing the
roundup all in the name of promoting
stability. And, from a ruthlessly
pragmatic point of view, this assertion
might seem reasonable enough.
Mubarak and his supporters argue that
since Egypt is in the midst of a
s crusade
dangerous crisis, special
measures-even the most flagrant
violation of civil liberties-are
justified to prevent greater instability
and anarchy. Not a bad argument if
the crackdown could be excused as an
exceptional and very temporary
means of restoring order.
But the irony of Mubarak's policy of
suppression is that in the long run, his
hardline approach may well condemn
Egypt to violent instability.
Though throwing most of one's op-
ponents in jail might seem like a good
short-run solution, in fact it often only
serves to strengthen the opposition. It
persuades moderates to become op-
ponents, and pushes opponents to em-
ploy increasingly radical measures in
their,' fight against the government.
Further, the crackdown will provide a
focus around which elements of the
radical left and radical right can unite
in opposition. In the end, Mubarak's
imprisonment of his radical opposition
may generate so much more op-
position that he may ensure the down-
fall of his own government, thus
throwing the entire region into
dangerous instability.
Left on their own, the Egyptian
government's opponents are probably
too divided and not strong enough to
topple Mubarak. But Mubarak's
crusade may solidify the factions of his
opposition and doom his own regime.
Mubarak should be commended for
his dedication to the foreign policy goal
of his predecessor, a real peace in the
Mideast. But his equal dedication to
Sadat's misguided and blatantly unjust
domestic policies is dangerously short-
sighted.
TO 0D 0
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GRANTS, N.M.-Lee Pittard
left New Mexico state gover-
nment five years ago at age 27 to
make his fortune building houses
and shopping centers in the
uranium boom town of Grants.
These days, he still is
building-in the oil boom region
of southeast New Mexico.
Ignacio Salazar, who im-
migrated to Grants from Mexico
in 1967 and founded an ex-
ploratory drilling business with
his brothers, still is drilling-for
carbon dioxide in northeast New
Mexico.
Dave Zerwas, insurance agent
and ex-mayor of Grants, planned
to cash in on the boom with a sub-
division of more than 77 homes.
Today, his Western Terrace
development, its streets laid out,
fire hydrants in place, and utility
cables laid underground, has
somewhat fewer than its planned
number of houses-two. ,
'Grants, the proud "uranium
capital of the world," is still in a
depression.
Over the past two years, 25
mines have closed, and of the 26
that remain open, at least three
are on reduced work schedules
and produce only small amounts
of uranium for stockpiling.
Several others will close in 1982,
adding to an estimated 2,500 jobs
already lost in the Grants area,
where the population has dropped
from 15,000 to 12,500.
Government statistics and the
opinions of outside experts give
little ground for optimism.
Nevertheless, townspeople here
confidently predict a re-boom. "I
think Reagan is for the uranium
industry, and it is just going to
take a little while," said Martin
Allex, the city government's
director of accounting. "This
town's going to make it. Uranium.
is going to come back."
Paul Robinson, executive
director of an Albuquerque-based
environmental protection
The uranium
boom
fizzles out'
By Peter Katel
1
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t
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.. ..._ ,a_...__ _.,:.
a faint echo of that criticism. Lee
Pittard says that Hobbs, the oil
boom town where he now does
most of his business, is helped
more by oil companies than
Grants is by uranium firms.
A uranium company executive
tacitly acknowledged that his in-
dustry has some unmet respon-
sibilities to the town. But Steve
Mooney, executive vice president
of Gulf Mineral Resources, a
division of Gulf Oil now
developing the world's deepest
uranium mine at Mt. Taylor near
Grants, said: "There just hasn't
been the kind of profit structure
that would allow (uranium) com-
panies to do some of the things
they would like to do."
When the uranium industry
began, the U.S. government was
its sole customer, under long-
term contracts that provided a
comfortable return to the sup-
pliers. Then in the 1960s the
government curtailed buying,
stopping altogether in 1970. The
uranium industry-and Gran-
ts-suffered for a few years.
But shortly after, with nuclear
power seen as the wave of the
future, the market started to
boom. In April 1976 the price of
uranium reached $40 a pound. In
uranium producers, "there was
probably some over-optimism
about the uranium market." The
rest of the nuclear industry made
the same mistake, he added.
Though the price of uranium
failed to rise after 1976 in real
dollar terms, and then dropped in
the wake of the 1979 Three Mile
Island disaster, "the uranium in-
dustry kept gearing up and it's
almost as if the sellers totally
took their eyes off the
customers," said, one
professional uranium watcher
and nuclear power advocate.
And when the market- fell,
Grants bled.
The, public school system
already has laid off 25 teachers
and 20 aides and' custodians, as
enrollment dropped from the
peak of 5,900 in 1978-79 to less
than 5,200 this year. Businessmen
say that bankruptcies are com-
mon. Suppliers have tightened
credit terms on the surviving en-
terprises. There is an apartment
vacancy rate of more than 30
percent, compared to 9.2 percent
one year ago.
Though there is talk in Grants
of broadening the town's
economic base, nothing yet has
come of it.
August that the uranium industry
can turn around in five years.
The Grants Daily Beacon called
that forecast "bad news," but the
real picture may be even worse.
The overall consumption of
electricity in the United States
hastrisen only two to three per-
cent a year since the 1973-74 oil
embargo. For decades, before,
the annual growth rate had been
seven percent. That is one reason
why utilities have been can-
celling nuclear reactor construc-
tion orders. In 1973, according to
the Department of Energy, 25
new reactors were ordered. In
1979 and 1980 the number was
zero.
In addition, he said, foreign
uranium is cheaper. As for
uranium purchases by gover-
nment for military uses, White
said, such buying "is zeroeand
likely to be zero." The gover-
nment has stockpiled 50,000 tons
of uranium, and military uses
require amounts far smaller than
civilian reactors.
The effects of one-industry
dependence are easily visible in a
town as small as Grants. They
become crystal clear when one
looks at its individual citizens.
Margarito Martinez, a uranium
miner for 20 years and a coal
miner for -22 years before that,
said he doesn't worry about him-
self in the event of the industry
shutting down completely in
Grants.
He owns his home free and
clear and has no debts. But there
is the matter of his 25-year-old
son, a miner for Kerr-McGee.
"I want him to stay here. He
wants to," Martinez said. "I am
concerned about it--after all, I'm
the one that sold him on the in-
dustry. He could have gone to
college. That's the only thing I
feel bad about."
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