Outstanding feedback from the East side of town

In the news business, it's safe to say that the majority of the feedback we get is negative. People routinely write in to remind us that we misspelled a word in a caption or headline, or bungled someone's name. Sometimes that feedback is positive, and when it is most of us reporters tend to make sure the person delivering knows how much we appreciate it (truth be told, most of us try and respond as positively as possible to negative feedback.)

But I have to say, in all my days as a reporter, I've never gotten a piece of feedback quite like the one I got last week, which is shown here.

Some background: I wrote what I thought was a harmless column last fall based on my observations during my daughter's swim meet. The point of the column was that I thought it was nice that we live in the kind of community where we can have an East/West rivalry, yet everyone goes home friends.

Well ... Some of the folks on the east side of town didn't care for it. I poked a little fun at East because, on that night, West prevailed. Some didn't take my writing in the good-natured vein in which it was intended. I let it go, hoping it would just die down and go away. And then an envelope made its way to my desk last week. I opened, unfolded the paper inside, and I couldn't help but smile.

The document wasn't signed, there was no return address. Just a series of changes and some minor editing to reflect a different result. I'll leave you to check it out.

My response: Well played, sir/ma'am.