Wednesday, May 20, 2009

He lives where?

I go to work every day in a place called Primos, Pa. Nice place. It has something in common with lots of other places in Delaware County, places like Secane, Linwood, Boothwyn, Glen Mills, Broomall, Havertown and Drexel Hill.

And what that might be? None of them actually exist …. other than in the eyes of the United State Postal Service.

There is no such place as Primos. We actually are located in Upper Darby Township, right down here in the corner wedged in against Aldan and Clifton Heights.

I can’t tell you how much trouble this creates for me. Why? I’ll tell you why.

When someone does something they should not be doing and it merits those actions being written up in the newspaper, where do you think we get that information from? We get it from the police. And where do they get their info from? They get most likely get it from the suspect’s driver’s license, which is based on where that person gets his or her mail delivered.

Which is nice, but it may or may not be where they actually live.

Do you know how many places get their mail delivered from the Media Post Office. Here’s some breaking news for you: They have not moved the Granite Run Mall to Media. It in fact is not located in Media, no matter how many times they say it is. It is located in Middletown Township, right down the street from the Media Barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police. It’s not located in Media, either. It’s also in Middletown.

The policy of the newspaper is whenever we can to use the geographic location, not just the mailing address.

We violated that tenet again last weekend in reporting the arrest of a man on rape charges. We listed him as being a resident of Brookhaven.
That’s because his address is served by the Brookhaven Post Office.

But several readers pointed out that his address is clearly in the Toby Farms section of Chester Township.

They didn’t like the idea of their fine town being so besmirched.
Neither do I. Sorry about that.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home