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News / Clark County News

From the Newsroom: Why Santa doesn’t get much press

By Craig Brown, Columbian Editor emeritus
Published: December 21, 2024, 6:09am

With a week to go until Christmas Eve, I looked to see how much press we’ve given Santa Claus this year.

The answer, unfortunately, was not much. We hadn’t published his photo. He had been part of three local articles, mostly listings of local holiday events, and had a couple of passing mentions in wire and syndicated copy. For comparison, Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle got 35 mentions, Donald Trump had 662, and the Grinch had two.

Santa’s small amount of press likely would have upset my predecessor. Lou Brancaccio was a great editor who had a few unwritten rules. Publishing at least one photo of Santa Claus sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas was one of those rules!

I looked back to see what kind of press Santa got during Lou’s tenure. I came across one of my own stories, written back in 1997, where I used Santa as a way to talk about retail sales. It went like this:

“From a mistletoe-green executive armchair at the heart of Vancouver Mall, the CEO of Christmas surveys his realm with a wave and a wink.

“‘It seems that kids aren’t asking for quite as many things this year,’ says Santa Claus on a rare break between greeting eager young consumers. …

“Maybe Santa has spotted a trend. For some retailers, it’s been a solid, if unspectacular, season.”

The story then goes on to talk about holiday retail sales. A little box with the story listed what kids were asking for most that Christmas: Giga Pets, Barbie dolls and accessories, Beanie Babies, video games, computers, bicycles, and, surprisingly, fishing poles.

Most of our Santa reportage over the years came on weekends, when we staffed reporters and photographers and sent them to community festivals and events to produce spot features, which we called “monkeyfishes.” (How those stories got that name will have to wait for another day to be told.)

We don’t write monkeyfishes anymore; our local weekend staffing is mostly in Sports. That’s why you’ll occasionally see a sports editor’s byline on a police story; they pick up the routine weekend coverage rather than call in a metro reporter or editor on a day off.

A tender subject

Maybe Santa’s diminished press is actually a good thing. Writing about Santa Claus can be an unintentional minefield, according to Amaris Castillo’s story published recently by the journalism training nonprofit Poynter Institute. The story even came with a “reader discretion advised” label.

According to Castillo, “Every holiday season, journalists covering Santa Claus face this delicate dance. There are parents who shield their children from the truth about the portly white-bearded man bearing gifts, and that same sensitivity spreads, for the most part, to newsrooms.”

A reporter for the Tampa Bay Times caused a furor a couple of Christmases ago with a story headlined “The delicate Claus question: Is it naughty or nice to encourage kids to believe in the jolly old elf?”

She said she was amazed at the backlash, with some parents taking to social media to accuse her and the Times of crusading against Christian beliefs.

But you can write successfully about Santa. In 2007, a reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser donned the red suit and pulled a shift at a mall. He ended up with an engaging story that didn’t ruffle feathers because he was careful to identify himself in the story as just a mall Santa. He told Castillo, “I kind of glossed over the aspect of ‘OK, am I the Santa? There are more Santas?’ ”

With only a few days until Christmas, it’s unlikely we’ll write much more about Santa this season. But I do like the idea of subbing for Santa, and I certainly am old, fat and gray enough, so maybe next year!

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