Speaking of, I think that’s one clear benefit to this forum. If I’m on a ship, I can bullshit with my shipmates. But since I’m not currently on a ship I have to come here so I can bullshit with other peoples shipmates. If not, how else would we pass the time?!
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If I’m understanding @john correctly, it all falls back to having to use the wording that the Navy’s PAO gave in the interview.
They were typical dipshit haze gray Navy that doesn’t know proper terminology for CIVMAR positions so they couldn’t sign off on “Chief Mate.” They could however sign off on “XO,” as that meant “second in command” to them. Because that was the case, it’s the terminology gCaptain has to use to not deal with the Navy saying “we didn’t say that!”
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Oh this is great, I had:
Snowflakes
Butt hurt
Bull crap
Millennials
Woke Bull Shit
on my card. Bingo!
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So back to (part) of the topic at hand…I’ve tried to find an avenue to correct glaring maritime-related errors in stories from major outlets. Either there’s no obvious point of contact, or no one responds. It seems you are the only one who responds directly, probably because you provide the avenue for communication and you actually care. So what is the recommended method of gaining the attention of main stream media journalists who get sh#t wrong?
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Learn how to use Twitter or send private messages via LinkedIn.
Be helpful, nobody wants to help someone who sounds angry or butthurt.
Not just journalists. @Salvatore_Mercoglian and I have been giving Mayor Pete, MARAD, CNO Gilday and the secretary of the navy hell on Twitter for months.
https://twitter.com/mercoglianos/status/1549172212078624768?
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Not to brag, but I managed to get a reporter for a local weekly to do a reasonably good merchant marine story a few years ago, and from that, I’ve had other reporters contact me.
I second using twitter, almost every reporter has a twitter account, and most will have an email listed in their profile, most list their email in their byline too, for that matter.
When you write, be polite and professional, stay on point, and keep to one subject, and be concise, no one wants to read a 40 page screed.
Don’t forget to praise, if a story about merchant mariners is good, write and say so, and when you need to criticize an article, add some praise there too, what was good about the article.
Use the comments section of your local news media, journalists read them, but so do other readers.
Offer to help, if you’re in a Union, are your Union officials willing to talk to the press, if not, try and persuade them, if not, volunteer to do it for them.
The same goes when you write your Congress person, which everyone here should be doing on every maritime issue
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Wow, some of you went bonkers at that article. Maybe next time John could use parentheses to help clear things up and keep from triggering you ringknockers. 
“The ship’s civilian XO (also known as a Chief Mate in the Maritime industry) did bad things, blah blah…”
Just my $0.02 as a guy who got a B in community college english class, who is also not far removed from being tugboat trash.
This also is great advice for GCaptain comments!
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The rage of some of the posters is still confusing to me. Like really, THAT angry? Making wild accusations and character attacks.
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Also, the old knives came out! People brought up inconsequential grudges and slights from years ago!
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There are people who wake up in the morning wanting to be pissed off, and go to sleep angry that they weren’t pissed off enough. 
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How is arguing about deck officer titles ‘woke’?
I don’t think you understand the concept of ‘wokeness’…
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woke: having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices
You snowflakes think it’s an injustice that John called you a generic title instead of your Merchant Marine title because you are unique merchant marine snowflakes who deserve special treatment. That’s woke
“low-key threaten” is a woke term like micro-aggression. Sappa is all butthurt because the person in authority sometimes laid down the rules. That’s woke bullshit
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After this lesson I had to look up “snowflake” “sappa” and a few others mentioned. [I thought ‘sappa’ might be the same as sapper which concerned me]
The contemporary insult snowflake was popularized by the 1996 novel and 1999 film adaptation Fight Club , which tells the story’s wannabe fighters: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.”
Fight Club’s snowflake, though, isn’t its earliest instance as an insult. During the Civil War in Missouri, pro-slavery advocates were called snowflakes for valuing white people over black people. (That’s a diss we can get behind.) Over a century later in the 1970s, black people who were seen as acting too white were mocked as snowflakes. The idea, here, is whiteness—like snow. Fight Club, nevertheless, did help to spread snowflake as a contemporary insult online in the 2000s to tease sheltered, helicopter-parented, everyone-gets-a-trophy young adults. The core metaphor is that such people are delicate like snowflakes, easily hurt by the hard realities of life, and think of themselves as special without realizing they are entitled and privileged— because every snowflake is different, as they say.
After reading the definition I decided it seems now a matter of snowflakes calling each other snowflakes because they disagree about something and cannot be bothered to express themselves using reason and logic.
Honestly, I had to also look up what a “karen” is and a few other terms. Anyone that can keep up with all the latest lazy insults really needs to get another job, a hobby or something.
It’s about way more than fighting. It is IMHO the most important book of my generation.
IMHO “Capital in the 21st Century” was the most important though I did enjoy ‘Fight Club’ also.
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Na, Joe. It just means a mellow-ish or quieter threat. John didn’t come in screaming that he was going to delete the forums. He said “I think you don’t trust me, if you don’t trust me then I should close the forums.” See how that’s pretty low-key?
From what I’ve seen, the XO - CM deal got massively overblown. But the vast majority of forum members (myself included) didn’t actively participate in any part of that discussion. So starting a thread called “Should this forum be closed?” (title since edited) and making it a referendum on trust was an unnecessary escalation.
Trust in John as a journalist or as a person is independent of trust in the forum. I have great trust in the forum. I trust that moderators will act fairly and in accordance with the rules, I trust that conflicting viewpoints will be allowed, and I trust that irrelevant or off-topic threads will be closed appropriately. John could write that the sky is green and defend it vehemently, and that wouldn’t affect my trust in the forum in any way.
Who approves moderators? John.
Who wrote the rules? John
Who lets you share your viewpoints? John
This isn’t a kumbaya campfire on public lands. It’s John’s forum.
Ya’ll kids are slippery trying to fit everything in its own pigeonhole. You either trust him or not.
I will add this. John is apparently a very tolerant person as well being an excellent advocate for merchant mariners from all over the world. Those have major problems with gCaptain can save themselves a lot of stress by ignoring the website or creating their own.
I think the cartoons alone are worth a click. 
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