Attention The London Free Press: Bring back the editors

When it comes to writing about urban planning, there’s a lot of stuff Randy Richmond gets wrong. Richmond is clearly a good writer but he sorely needs a good editor.

Richmond gets more than names wrong in his story on urban transit.

For instance, Richmond quotes Yonak Freemark. The name is Yonah. Oops! A good editor checks things like the spelling of names.

And despite the column inches Richmond devotes to transportation analyst David Hartgen, the reporter fails to mention it is no surprise that Hartgen is critical of the Charlotte, N.C., LYNX system. A good editor would find a way to tell the reader that the analyst is not a supporter of expensive, expanding public transit in general.

Hartgen believes a community can build its way out of a transportation mess, a traffic congestion nightmare. How? By adding road capacity. For Hartgen, the car is the answer.

Popping the ideas of David Hartgen into a story without telling readers that Hartgen is not just a simple transit critic but he is a promoter of one particular transit approach is not telling the whole story. As I said at the beginning, The London Free Press needs to hire more editors. Good editors keep good writers good.