Best Version Media – Part 6

What follows is a series of interactions between myself and a publishing company called Best Version Media (BVM) that I found to be unsettling and distasteful. It has resulted in me withdrawing my contributions to BVM publications. This story gets a little long, so I will be posting it in several parts. Here is part 6.

In part 5, I shared a letter that I wrote to PERSON 3 (name not included for sensitivity reasons), and senior manager of BVM. That letter was part of a set of back-and-fourth emails between me and BVM employees. Here is PERSON 3’s final response to me which was sent on 9/15/2020.

Dear Aaron,

You are entitled to disagree with our company’s policy as you clearly already had.We have never been a platform to discuss race or other social issues and that will not change. 

If you are telling me that you are not racist or sexist I will believe you. The way in which you expressed your views could have been more clear though as I was not the only one who read them as I did.  

As far as contributing writers, BVM does not pay any contributing writers. Most pay us. Many want to contribute because they know how much notoriety they get from our magazines or they just really enjoy writing about a particular topic. If you took issue with this then 4 years ago would have been the more appropriate time to do so.

In the spirit of understanding it is probably best and most accurate to say that neither one of us wants either discrimination or mertitless recognition based off of race, gender, etc and leave it at that. 

Have a great week

PERSON 3 name and title
www.BestVersionMedia.com

So, that is that.

After reading this response, and thinking about it for a bit, I decided that I could no longer contribute to BVM publications.

I continue to stand by everything I wrote in my article and subsequent letters. And I think that the responses from PERSON 3 display a thinking that I find very distasteful. The fact that PERSON 3 represents and speaks for BVM is why I have stopped contributing to their publications, and why I am publishing this whole exchange here.

I leave it to a candid world, and you dear reader. If you made it through all six parts of this story, you have my thanks. What conclusions do you draw from these writings? Was I out of line? Was PERSON 3? What do you think about all of this? If anyone wants more details and names of the individuals involved in this exchange, comment below and we can discuss further.

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Best Version Media – Part 5

What follows is a series of interactions between myself and a publishing company called Best Version Media (BVM) that I found to be unsettling and distasteful. It has resulted in me withdrawing my contributions to BVM publications. This story gets a little long, so I will be posting it in several parts. Here is part 5.

After reading the letter in part 4 of this series from PERSON 3 (name not included for sensitivity reasons), I wrote a response to him on 9/15/2020. Here is my letter to PERSON 3.

Dear PERSON 3,

In reading your response to my letter from the company perspective, it seems I need to clarify the point of that letter. My hope was that Best Version Media (BVM) would reconsider the blanket policy of never discussing racial or social issues. That is still my hope.

In response to your personal comments, I have a few personal comments of my own.

Reading your responses, personal though you stated them to be, I was surprised at how unprofessional you were. In my article and letter, I do not attack BVM, you, or any other individual. I did not call BVM names, nor did I do so to you or any other individual. I would expect that you would extend the same basic courtesies to me.

You claim that I advocate that birds should be named for people solely based on skin color, gender, or sexual orientation. This is simply false. Nowhere in either my article or letter do such statements appear. I do advocate for greater diversity and representation in bird names and for greater inclusion in the birding community. I disagree with you that calling for greater diversity, inclusion, and representation can be classified as racist or sexist.

I have been a regular contributor to four different BVM publications over the past four years with no compensation. Given this, I was surprised by your responses. It seems a poor business decision, and again very unprofessional, to attack your own contributors.

I will end by saying that I hope your responses to my article and letter do not represent the “best version” of individuals that your company claims to promote.

Sincerely,

Aaron N.K. Haiman

PERSON 3’s second letter to me will appear in part 6.

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Best Version Media – Part 4

What follows is a series of interactions between myself and a publishing company called Best Version Media (BVM) that I found to be unsettling and distasteful. It has resulted in me withdrawing my contributions to BVM publications. This story gets a little long, so I will be posting it in several parts. Here is part 4.

In part 3, I wrote a letter of concern to BVM hoping that they rethink their stance that they simply will not publish materials that discuss race or racism.

I received a response from PERSON 3 (name not included for sensitivity reasons), an individual very high in the management of BVM. This is not the individual that I originally addressed my letter of concern to. Here is PERSON 3’s response to me on 9/11/2020.

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for reaching out. I am more than happy to address your article and letter of concerns from the company side of things. BVM is not a news source nor are we a platform for people’s personal social convictions. There are other places for that and we are not it. We do not cover the topic of race in any way either. It is not part of our company’s business model to “discuss” race in our magazines or online.

On the personal side, I find both your article and letter disturbing. Your article advocates that a bird be named after someone purely due to how they identify their sex or what race they are? No mention of education on the topic or identifying species or anything.  These are extreme sexist and racist views to have in 2020. To promote that anyone should have or not have honorable mention purely due to the shade of skin color they have is disgustingly racist and insulting to those of any race. 

To promote a view that someone should also be elevated this way purely because of gender (or gender identification) is equally wrong and insulting to women. Furthermore, to imply that others should not have a bird named after them for no other reason than there are too many “white men” with birds named after them is appalling.

I encourage you to see people for the human dignity they all have and not the way they identify as or their shade of skin color. Respect everyone, love everyone and see everyone as a person not a demographic. Only then will everyone be treated equal. Please learn to treat everyone equal.

Thank you     

PERSON 3 name and title
www.BestVersionMedia.com

My response to this letter will appear in part 5.

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Best Version Media – Part 2

What follows is a series of interactions between myself and a publishing company called Best Version Media (BVM) that I found to be unsettling and distasteful. It has resulted in me withdrawing my contributions to BVM publications. This story gets a little long, so I will be posting it in several parts. Here is part 2.

As stated in part 1, I wrote and submitted an article to be published in a set of monthly community magazines that I wrote for every month. This one touched on racism in the birding community.

Here is the article which I submitted on 8/10/2020.

Bird Names and Social Justice

By Aaron N.K. Haiman

In May of 2020, a birder asked a dog owner to leash their dog in Central Park, New York. The area of Central Park where this took place is an area where off leash dogs are not allowed, so this exchange might not seem particularly noteworthy. But it became noteworthy because the birder was a black man named Christian Cooper and the dog owner was a white woman who first threatened to call the police on Cooper, and then followed through on that threat stating to the police that she and her dog were being put in danger of their lives by a black man. This weaponizing of race was all recorded with cell phones and has now been seem by millions. It triggered the launch of Black Birders Week, an event that highlighted the challenges faced by birders of color. Black Birders Week brought awareness of some of those challenges, and some ideas for potential solutions, into focus for many. I, for one, very much hope that this event is repeated next year, and for many years to come.

One product of Black Birders Week, and the events and protests for racial justice occurring around the world, is some reexamination of the world around us. Why are some statues so problematic? Because they honor people who did some less than honorable things. Owning people, for example. Are there parallels in the birding world? Yes. One way that birders honor people is by naming birds after them, and this can be problematic in the same way as those statues.

Who are birds named after? Are those people really the ones birders want to honor? The answer is complicated. Some people are unworthy of the birds named after them. Some people are worthy of the honor given. Some people occupy a grey and uncomfortable space. All need to be talked about.

Personally, I have long taken issue with the name Bullock’s Oriole. William Bullock was a conman who presented the people of London with a natural history museum filled with specimens he presented as authentic, but that were, if fact, created for entertainment. As one example, he had a display in his museum that included a huge taxidermy snake that was actually two snake skins sewed together to make it appear bigger. He was also very wealthy, and he used his wealth to buy favor with scientific societies, explorers, and collectors and (among other things) this led to a bird being named after him. 

On the other hand, Alexander Wilson was a person that I think definitely deserves the honor conferred by the five species of bird that have been named after him. He was a pioneer of American ornithology who satirized the weaver profession (to which he was apprenticed when young) and who went on to teach ornithology for much of his life. His bird focused art and writing inspired innumerable naturalists and birders including John James Audubon.

Speaking of Audubon, he is a more questionable figure as a bird namesake. He is certainly rightly famous for bringing the beauty of birds to millions of people through his art. However, several of his writings contain distinctly racist views. He led the way in drawing and painting with incredible attention to accuracy. However, he owned slaves. It seems to me that better namesakes are available.

Of course, the names of birds share the lack of representation that is so pervasive in our society. Very few women have birds named after them. Very few people of color. Very few members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

It is my hope that bird names and birding culture change to more accurately represent and include all who have an interest in joining the birding community.

Stay safe, and wash your hands!

The response to this article will appear in part 3 of this series.

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Best Version Media – Part 1

What follows is a series of interactions between myself and a publishing company called Best Version Media (BVM) that I found to be unsettling and distasteful. It has resulted in me withdrawing my contributions to BVM publications. This story gets a little long, so I will be posting it in several parts. Here is part 1.

In the spring of 2017 I began writing articles about birds for a small community magazine in Berkeley, CA, where I grew up. This magazine is published monthly, was successful, and grew. The team organizing it decided to launch two additional monthly magazines serving other communities in the east bay, and my articles have appeared in all three. Then in 2019, a different team of individuals launched a similar monthly community magazine in West Sacramento, CA, where I now live, and I started writing bird focused material for this magazine as well.

All four of these magazines are distributed by a larger company called Best Version Media (BVM).

According to their website Best Version Media: “distributes millions of community publications every year to local neighborhoods across the U.S. and Canada. We’re bringing people together, one community at a time, by tailoring our publications to the areas we serve.

Our community publications feature local families and highlight neighborhood news, events, sports and much more. By combining key elements of social media with the print media industry, BVM has experienced unparalleled growth since our company’s founding in 2007.

We proudly connect thousands of small businesses to local residents by providing business owners with a highly effective and powerful advertising platform. We’re one of the fastest-growing companies in the print media industry because we successfully target hyperlocal areas like no one else can.”

Overall, I like the idea of these magazines. I like a non-screen based mechanism for bringing people together. I like the idea of a platform that tells people about their neighbors and what is going on in their area.

The articles I created for these monthly magazines were about all things birds. I wrote about bird identification, behavior, ecology, conservation, and other related topics. Birding is one of my big passions, and sharing knowledge and enjoyment of birds is another.

In response to the protests for racial equality that began earlier this year, I wrote and submitted an article on racism, racism in the birding community, and in the lack of representation and diversity in the naming of birds. The article will appear as part 2, so stay tuned.

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East Bay Birds – November

A Black Phoebe

I have been writing a monthly article for a set of three neighbor magazines for the past couple of years now. These magazines are distributed to a handful of east bay neighborhoods. I have shared one or two of the articles in previous posts, and am thinking of doing so more regularly, so here is the article on Phoebes that I wrote for the November issue of Berkeley Hills Living, Monclair Living, and Piedmont Living magazines.

Berkeley Hills Living – November 2019 Issue

A Say’s Phoebe

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Birds of Berkeley

Cover of the August issue of Berkeley Hills Living.

In December of 2016, Berkeley Hills Living published their first issue. Berkeley Hills Living is a small magazine produced by Best Version Media, and published monthly. The goal is to create a community magazine where residents of the Berkeley hills neighborhoods can share information, events, local happenings, etc. After reading the first couple of issues, and liking the idea of a community magazine, I proposed the idea of writing a monthly column on the birds of the Berkeley hills. The publishers thought is sounded like a great idea, and my first piece for “Bird of Berkeley” appeared in the April issue. I have continued to contribute pieces to each issue since. So far, there has not been digital copies that have been easily available, but the August issue just came out, and I received a digital copy. You can check out the whole issue here, and read my piece on bird feeder care and maintenance on page 15.

It has been fun to add to this magazine, and fun to have my pieces meet with so much support and enthusiasm from the readership! I certainly plan to continue contributing material, and will share future issues of the magazine if the digital copies continue to be distributed. Enjoy!

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