An apology to DMG readers

To the editor:

I have spent the past week and a half trying to find the right words to say. It has not been easy.

When I joined the Daily Mining Gazette eight years ago, I never imagined that I would move from sports writer to assistant editor, from assistant editor to assistant/sports editor, and from assistant/sports editor to managing editor. 

I took the job of sports writer to cover Michigan Tech sports. I discovered a love for the community as a whole I never had while growing up in the Houghton-Portage Township school system.

Throughout my career, I have always been a see-a-need, fill-a-need kind of person. That has led me to take on more responsibility than perhaps I should have at various points.

However, I have been proud to move up the ladder and take on the challenges that ensued. That makes this so hard to write, but also extremely necessary: to everyone who reads the DMG, both in print and online, I am so very sorry.

You as readers put your faith and your trust in me as the managing editor to make sure that the stories we put on the pages were the best they could be. Sure, sometimes I moved a little too fast and missed a spelling error, or I cut a paragraph off mid-sentence. Those are small mistakes in the grander scheme of things.

On Friday, April 29, I made a much bigger mistake, one that cost me my position. I decided to print a letter to the editor titled, “A Layman’s Appraisal.” 

I could sit here and waste your time rattling off reasons why and how I made that decision I made, but that will not help anyone. The only one I will offer is that I worked hard to try to cover open positions that we had in the editorial department, so I was not always as attentive to small details as I should have been.

I did read the letter, but definitely not as closely as I should, instead reading it more for errors than content. As a result, I read the writer’s point of view one way, but the community read it differently. 

I apologize for making such a lapse in judgment. I should have seen this letter for what it was. Instead of being something that could bring people together, it had the opposite effect, injuring much of the community. 

With the damage it has caused, there is no way to take back the action of printing the letter.

I can only hope that now is the time for healing, a chance for all of us as a community to come together. That being said, I do have a question. 

How can I help?

Daver Karnosky