Courier-Herald missed the mark on ‘downtown cruise’ article

Thank you very much for the generally very good and enjoyable article 5/12/2020 about the Cruise Enumclaw event.

I want to mostly highlight what I feel was positive about it.

For starters the headline is just what one might hope for on a piece about an event like this. Shining a good light on the benefits for local businesses, and the wonderful scale of donations to the food bank were top notch. Mentions of raising morale in the community and breaking the stress of the “stay at home order” was well received commentary!

I think it was important and well deserved praise that was given to the police at the event as well, and especially poignant to outline the hard time local business have been facing.

I do have to also say that I believe some mention of the spectators deviations from the social distancing guidelines was needed, and was suitable to the article. However, I think that far too much of the article was focused on social distancing standards and politics and the bulk of it would have been better served to follow the good that was done that evening.

Currently far too much of the media’s time is spent on negativity surrounding the virus that this event helped assuage, if just for an evening.

I believe that the Courier-Herald had the unique opportunity to take some time away from that outlook, and missed the mark in some ways. It was of course important to mention that much better caution could have been taken by the spectators.

Still, far too much column space was devoted to the this, making what headlined as an article with very positive look at community support feel lost in an overshadow of an already over-reported issue. This ended up taking away from the overwhelming good the event did, cast a shadow on the many people involved in the event production and cars that came (who were all in compliance) and made the article a lot less enjoyable overall.

Well, that is my two cents. Please continue to produce one of the best local papers around. We need you in our community. I do miss seeing the Bonney Lake edition in my driveway every week.

Thank you for all that you guys do!

Dee Vyoer

Bonney Lake