Well well well! Looks like I’m really making friends at the Telegraph!
George McCanless emailed me a reply today, and copied Charles Richardson and Sherrie Marshall.
There’s so much wrong with this condescending “go eff yourself” email. I’m going to publish it here and, since Mr. McCanless and Mr. Richardson read this blog (hi guys! one of these days we’ll have an Obama-style “beer summit” and laugh about this), give my answer in public.
I hope you saw Charles’ note on the letters page this past Sunday regarding our letters policy. As far as how many times people are published, that rule was instituted to control prolific writes who submit stuff to us on a daily basis. However, we reserve the right to run writers more than once if their letter is of particular relevance in a discussion or in relation to current events.
It comes as no suprise to me that your “favorites” send you letters every day. No suprise at all.
So you admit that you do publish some of your “favorites” more than once per week. Sorry but your excuse doesn’t fly. One letter a week should be one letter a week. Period. The extra letters you print from your favorites are no more “particular relevance” than any other letter on the same subject from those who don’t get published.
As far as your letters go, I refer you to the guidelines we run everyday on the Opinion page: “Priority will be given to letters that address contemporary local issues and have community wide interest. Letters whose only intent is to direct personal criticism, or letters that are racially divisive or otherwise objectionable, will not be considered.”
With that in mind, don’t you think that Daniel Schlafer’s weekly letters attacking Sarah Palin have as their only intent to direct personal criticism? I have it on good authority that the owner of The Rifleman wrote a reply to the hit piece that Ed Corson wrote about his radio ads. Did that get published? Look what Chris Krok had to go through to get his reply published when he was attacked by one of your columnists. Where are the letters presenting “the other side”? Daniel Schlafer has had 10 letters printed this year. How many of those were not personal attacks on Sarah Palin or Fox News? Those are the only two subjects he writes about. Keep in mind that I do keep track, so if you want statistics I will be happy to post them up.
The emails you have copied me on are nothing more than petty attacks on The Telegraph because we run some letter or letters that you do not agree with, or your attempting to take us to task for running a letter writer more than once a week. Neither of these in my analysis meets the criteria for addressing local issues or appealing to community interest. And yes, our policy is to prohibit form letters and press releases. We do our best to weed them out, and I think we do a very good job in that regard. Sure, one or two has gotten through, but those submitters have now been flagged for additional review.
Petty? Only because you don’t like what I have to say, Mr. McCanless. I do not email you because I don’t agree with a letter you publish. I have only taken you to task for publishing your favorites more than once a week, for printing Sarah Hunt’s cut-and-pasted form letter, and for twice printing plagiarized letters from Frank Gadbois. I submit to you that my letters regarding Frank Gadbois’ plagiarism, and the fact that you would not say anything publicly even when you published a letter praising one of his plagiarized letters, are indeed very much of interest to the community.
Mr. Ganas, fortunately we get way more letters than we have space to print them. As a result, we choose to deal with the ones that do address topical issues, especially dealing with our local community. You obviously have an interest in these issues as well since you seem not only to read the letters section every day, but to even keep track of who writes what. I would encourage you to direct that time and energy in opining about these issues, and sharing with others your ideas on how to improve our community and our country. Those are the kinds of letters we place priority on, and which have the most benefit to readers, and which end up in print.
In other words, “please stop watching us so closely, we don’t like having egg on our faces”. Mr. McCanless, do you know how much time I actually spend on this little project of mine? It only takes a few minutes to write down the names of letter writers each day. I multi-task. I do that while drinking my morning coffee. If I had wireless at home, I could do it while taking my morning dump, which in a way would be appropriate.
Judging by the tone of your email, and the fact that you copied Charles Richardson and Sherrie Marshall, I’m willing to bet it wasn’t a happy day in the ivory editorial tower when Frank Gadbois’ very first letter after his suspension in February was revealed to be plagiarized. How did the phone call from the New York Times’ Rights and Permissions department go? They weren’t very happy with you, were they?
I’m not going to stop, Mr. McCanless. The Viewpoints page is a joke.
When the multi-poster literally shut down View Points, I wrote George McCandless along with several of the board members of the Knight foundation. Wow! I could not BELIEVE the rude comment I got back. Now, upper manangement gave an entirely different response. After Mr. McCandless’ response, my husband & I knew we would NEVER advertise our businesses in the local paper again nor would we ever buy another one.