I enjoyed reading the piece on Isaac Dickson in the Feb. 14 print issue. However, I must make a comment about the use of images. An otherwise wonderful and fascinating history lesson was marred by your editorial decision to apply hip graphics and peachy colors to the primary source photographs selected to accompany the article, rendering them nearly unrecognizable.
What was the point of that? You chose an interesting and important local subject to highlight, presumably in recognition of Black History Month. The photographs are an important part of the story; they are not merely decoration. Why, then, splice them and apply Turner-like colorization? Oddly, the images appear in their original digitized format on your website, but even there you miss a critical step and fail to identify either what they are or where they are archived.
If you cover local history topics, please don't be careless in your treatment of them. People who made significant local contributions in our past deserve the same dignity as those in our present. I hope I never see one of my ancestors reduced to a blotchy mess in your paper.
Keep up your good work, not this stuff.
— Karin Hedberg
Weaverville, NC
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