Can you really handle the truth?

I read with mild amusement your brief article explaining your origins and how your paper takes on the hard stories [October 11 editor's note: "Why the Hook? We unveil a new motto for this newspaper."]

In the spirit of fairness concerning your origins, you started in 2002. Are you not obligated to publish the real estate transactions prior to that date? After all, why are only the people who bought or sold real estate once your publication started penalized with an invasion of their privacy?

It is inconsistent and discriminatory to include one class of people and not the other. It is also a disingenuous explanation to say you are doing nothing more than what is already in the public record. That's fine in theory, but in practice in order to find that information in the public record you have to do your on search and know who you want to search for. That's a far cry from publishing the names of all the local citizens that bought or sold real estate in any given year.

So with the New Year, can you set the standard by your own example of truthfully reporting and weighing in on the aforementioned issues? To paraphrase Jack Nicholson's now iconic line, "Can you handle the truth"? Will this correspondence ever see the light of day in your weekly by being published?

J. Stanley
Albemarle