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Reis wrongly refers to reporter’s wolf story as an op-ed

Marlon Reis, Colorado’s first gentleman, proved in a recent Facebook post that he knows less about journalism than he does about dangerous carnivores.

First, he called The Fence Post’s Rachel Gabel’s news story published in the Dec. 25 issue about Colorado bringing in wolves from depredating packs in Oregon an op-ed. There is a difference between an op-ed and a news story. In an op-ed, Gabel would have written about her feelings towards Colorado bringing in wolves into the state from Oregon. Instead, she quoted a wolf expert who has years of experience in the field, although Reis in his Facebook post said that he doubted “she spoke with a qualified carnivore biologists before jumping to the conclusion that later generations of wolves will always pattern their predation strategies after earlier generations.”

In the article she wrote, “John Williams, the co-chair of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association Wolf Committee who serves as the Eastern Oregon Wolf Committee Chair, has been involved with the association’s Wolf Committee since its inception in 1996. Williams retired from a long career as an Extension agent at Oregon State University. He was an associate professor in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at OSU where he worked for over 31 years. He began in 2008 conducting wolf/cattle interaction research and continued that work with a cadre of researchers until his retirement.”



If Reis knew anything about journalism or just writing in general, he would have recognized the quotation marks around this quote from Williams, “The simple answer is once a pack of wolves recognizes that steak is good, they will include that in their diet in the future,” he said. “The Five Points Pack had four wolves removed because they were chronically depredating in July and August.”

The quotation marks indicate that the sentences came from Williams and weren’t an opinion espoused by Gabel. Also, if it had been an opinion or op-ed piece it would have filled this space or the one page that we reserve every week for other’s opinions.



In fact, if Reis had written a letter to the editor to The Fence Post, we would have published it in our publication because we are not afraid of criticism. But obviously he is because instead of letting us know of his dissatisfaction with Gabel’s article, he groused about it on Facebook and then he or someone else took those posts down.

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