The Lakeland Ledger ain’t the New York Times. Duh. But the Lakeland Ledger is the local paper doing the bad reporting on the Ryan Skipper murder case, not the Times.

We had an e-mail at Pensito Review the other day from a guy who was trying to call the Ledger to task over its bad reporting. Garry, from Louisiana, was frustrated by what he’d read, so he sent an e-mail to the Ledger expressing his frustration (and quoting from Pensito Review). The Ledger, surprise, responded:

Thank you for your email. Everything we printed that you dispute has come from the Sheriff’s Office. If they change what they think happened at some point, we’ll report on that. But for now, that’s its official report.

Best,
Lenore Devore
Managing Editor
The Ledger
Lakeland, Florida

(from Garry’s e-mail to us)

But not everybody is disappointed in the Ledger’s reportage, and the paper printed a letter to the editor today that congratulates it on its coverage of the murder:

Re: Ryan Skipper, thank you for the nice article about Ryan [”2 Indicted In Slaying Of Polk Man,” March 30, page B1]. He was a great guy and a good friend. I will miss him terribly.

Hopefully, I can one day make it through the entire article, but as of right now I can’t without breaking down in tears. I’ll never understand how anyone can do such a thing. Disliking gays is one thing, but there is no rationale for killing them.

Ryan wasn’t just some random gay guy. He was someone’s friend and some parent’s child. There are no words that could make him less of a human being. But I have to wonder if the same can be said for the young men accused of taking Ryan’s life. Their reason for killing him isn’t justified. If they truly felt uncomfortable around him, they could’ve just walked away.

I read an article, recently, about a man who has to spend the rest of his days looking at a picture of the woman he killed. Maybe these men should face that same reality. Putting them to death wouldn’t inflict nearly the same amount of heartache they’ve put Ryan’s friends through.

They should have to be reminded every day of what they took from us, as long as they draw breath on this Earth. We won’t get a quick exit from our pain, why should they?

TODD A. JOHNSON

Lakeland

I hope Todd at some point is able to read the entire article because I think then he would join the rest of us in our assessment that the Ledger is doing a crappy job of reporting on this case.

Parroting back the homophobic assumptions and allegations offered BY THE GUYS WHO DID THE CRIME that Sheriff Judd has said is not good newspaper reportage. It’s not journalism, and all it does is slander a dead guy who, by most accounts was a good egg, not a bad fellow, and by any account did not deserve to be killed.

And printing a letter from a guy who hasn’t even read the whole article is no mea culpa, nor does it let the Ledger off the hook for screwing up.

It’s pitiful that the Lakeland Ledger, out of desperation, prints the only positive letter it has received about its coverage of the Skipper murder. I wonder how many negative letters it has received and whether we’ll ever see any of those in print.