Mr. Andrew Prieditis, declared citizen of Houston and the world!
Today, we salute one Andrew Prieditis, prolific newspaper letter writer and citizen of the world!
Mr. Prieditis came to our attention as we were catching up on Chron letters to the editor over the past week. Although the Houston Chronicle has "an informal 90-day waiting period between letters being published," Mr. Prieditis of Houston managed to get two letters (one on Sarah Palin on 3 August, and one on Joe Biden on 7 August) published within days of each other.
"Punking" the local Hearst daily -- especially now that former letters editor Judy Minshew is no longer around to bring her banking-industry expertise to bear -- is a little like adults taking candy from children (or perhaps even like mayors trying to take the homes of mentally handicapped people). While it certainly can be done, it should probably not be a source of pride or praise.
Mr. Prieditis, however, took it one step further. Not only did he beat the Chron's 90-day limitation on letters from the same person, he managed to get the same Palin letter published in at least five other newspapers (signed Andrew Prieditis, Rosemont in the Chicago Sun-Times online and print, Andrew Prieditis, Seattle in the Seattle Times online and print, Andrew Prieditis, Dallas in the Dallas Morning News online and in print, Andrew Prieditis, San Francisco in the San Francisco Chronicle -- another Hearst paper!).
We emailed a couple of hotmail addresses we found for Mr. Prieditis in hopes of scoring an interview, but haven't heard back from him. In 2007 at least, it would seem that the mysterious Mr. Prieditis was indeed a resident of Germantown, MD. But we prefer to think of him as a citizen of the world.
And to bring it back around to our hyperlocal angle, we view Mr. Prieditis's selection of Houston as one of his cities as yet further validation that WE ARE WORLD CLASS! So congrats to US -- and thank YOU, Andrew Prieditis!
Portrait of The Mystery Man by flickr user Sylvain Bourdos, used via a Creative Commons license.
UPDATE (08/13/09): Thanks to Romenesko for the link!
UPDATE (08/14/09): Eric Shackle emails us this great story that he did. Perhaps Andrew Prieditis was aiming to be the next Oscar Brittle!
UPDATE (08/17/09): Here is additional commentary from Eric Shackle and from Dan Bloom.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/09/09 02:44 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (1)
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