{"id":12312,"date":"2016-01-10T22:52:16","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T22:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12312"},"modified":"2016-01-10T22:54:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T22:54:11","slug":"how-would-this-guy-do-in-the-internet-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12312","title":{"rendered":"How would this guy do in the Internet Age?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"Internet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My mind wanders occasionally into strange places.<\/p>\n

I think of people I used to know and wonder things like, oh, how would they fare in today’s world?<\/p>\n

The name of a one-time Amarillo gadfly came to mind today. His name was Michael Wyatt. He’s deceased now; he died in an automobile accident in the late 1990s at a fairly young age.<\/p>\n

I came to Amarillo in early 1995 to become editorial page editor of the two papers published by the same owner: the Amarillo Daily News and the Amarillo Globe-Times.<\/p>\n

One of the things I learned upon arrival was that the\u00a0opinion section\u00a0operated under a policy that I felt compelled to change immediately. It did not place any time restriction on the frequency of people submitting letters to the editor. Put another way: One could get letters published every day of the week if he or she were so inclined.<\/p>\n

Michael Wyatt was a prolific letter writer. He had opinions on just about anything — and anyone<\/em> — in public life. He was unafraid. He took on City Hall, the school districts,\u00a0county governments, the chamber of commerce. You name it, he had something to say about it.<\/p>\n

The frequency of Wyatt’s submissions, I would learn, had a chilling effect on others who had something to say about a public issue. Wyatt scared people off, kept them from expressing their views. “Why get into a public\u00a0p*****g match with this loony bird?” they would ask themselves.<\/p>\n

Well, we changed the policy right away, settling finally on a once-per-calendar-month rule.<\/p>\n

He also would come engage us face to face, talk our ears off about this and\/or that. He wanted to know what we thought about something and, of course, he would share his own view.<\/p>\n

I’m wondering now how Wyatt would fare in this Internet Age.<\/p>\n

I have to believe he’d be in hog heaven with the availability of venues, forums, platforms, websites — whatever — to express himself.<\/p>\n

I wrote a column for the newspaper upon hearing of Wyatt’s death. I saluted him as someone who felt the calling to contribute to the public dialogue. He did so with gusto and demonstrated great courage in speaking his mind. A member of the Amarillo City Commission at the time called me to complain about the column paying tribute to Wyatt; he told me he “couldn’t stand him.” Why? “Well he was just so damn critical all the time.”<\/p>\n

My reaction at the time, as best as I can remember, was “umm, too bad.” He sought to keep our elected officials on their toes.<\/p>\n

To be blunt,\u00a0Wyatt likely would put many of the individuals who respond to this blog to shame. I’ve got my share of “regulars” who like to comment on this or that; many of them get into arguments with each other on the social media outlets through which I channel these blog posts (and which will receive this one once I’m finished with it).<\/p>\n

I find myself chuckling at the notion of Michael engaging in these seemingly endless exchanges. He was quite capable of devouring anyone rhetorically.<\/p>\n

It’s too bad he didn’t live long enough to witness the dawn of this new “information\/disinformation age.”<\/p>\n

Michael Wyatt — wherever he is now — no doubt is wishing he could come back to take part. He would be right at home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mind wanders occasionally into strange places. I think of people I used to know and wonder things like, oh, how would they fare in today’s world? The name of a one-time Amarillo gadfly came to mind today. His name was Michael Wyatt. He’s deceased now; he died in an automobile accident in the late … Continue reading How would this guy do in the Internet Age?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[179,287,309,2294,5852],"class_list":["post-12312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-city-commission","tag-amarillo-globe-news","tag-internet-age","tag-letters-to-the-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12312"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12318,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12312\/revisions\/12318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}