Bedbugs aren't the only things that bite. So do readers with heightened senses of patriotism - even nine years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil.
Our decision to run an oversized photo of a bedbug at the top of the Sept. 11 front page proved to be as irritating to several readers as the pests we chose to warn you about.
It's not like I didn't see it coming.
In fact, as we editors were talking the afternoon before about which stories should go A1, I warned, "Make sure there's a 9/11 anniversary story somewhere on the front page or we'll hear about it."
The story made it to the bottom of A1, and we heard about it anyway.
"Pathetic is the only word to describe it!" wrote "Disgusted reader in Harrison."
A McDonald, Tenn., reader wrote that our decision "was out of context with an important date in recent AMERICAN HISTORY. Why does a bed bug take priority over an attack on this country? Did you forget it was an [act] of war?"
Actually, it was an act of terrorism. And the reader was wrong that 9/11 was relegated to a cartoon and a history item inside the paper. Even so, there is no denying that we played the bedbug story much larger.
Here's why: It was the ninth anniversary of 9/11; the 10th will be much more poignant and significant. If we overplayed the ninth, what would we do for an encore?
Plus, bedbugs have reached epidemic proportions, according to federal health authorities. If they invade your homes, you'll have to undergo lifestyle changes, such as possibly throwing out your furniture and washing and drying every item of clothes.
The Middle Valley man whom we built our story around had not slept well for two weeks after the first bite in his war with bedbugs and had to spend $2,000 for pest control and a new mattress.
More than three weeks have passed since we editors made that call, and I'm still not sure it was the wrong one. There's a major difference of opinion among the journalists and acquaintances whose opinions I solicited on Facebook.
"The public should remember to remember, and not need to be reminded ad nauseum every September by something [newspapers] they've all but abandoned for free-wheeling bloggers and opinion-based news," wrote an ex-newspaper
colleague of mine.
Wrote another: "I'm a New Yorker and even I don't think it deserves above-the-fold play. Maybe next year it should be highlighted, but for now it's nine-year-old news."
Other journalists said the date is too important in American history to underplay and that we did.
They could be right.
If I had to do it again, I probably would run the 9/11 story across the top of the front page and then the bedbug story beneath it, albeit nearly as large.
That's the great thing about working at a newspaper, though: We start with a blank canvas every day. If we don't like the picture we paint today, we can start anew tomorrow.
J. Todd Foster is executive editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press and wrote this column while at work, not while moonlighting on the taxpayers' dime (see the front pages from last Sunday and Wednesday).