At my first paper, The Orangeville Banner, I wrote a column. It was called “Across the Street”. I called it that becuase I was the city hall reporter for the Orangeville Banner and the mayor's furniture store was right across the street from the paper's office. I don't think a lot of readers — or even my colleagues — saw the connection. Then I moved on to the Orillia Packet & Times where the only opinion pieces I wrote where theatre reviews. After that it was on the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal for my first job as a business reporter and another column. This one I called “All Business.” Don't laugh. I thought that was a catchy title.
I don't write columns anymore. They're too hard. You have to have strong opinions about something day in and day out and you have to express them well.
And you also expose yourself to people who disagree with you filling up your inboxes and voice-mail with nasty messages.
I think Neil Steinberg, a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times has a good solution to the problem of flames. He's got a form letter. You can read it for yourself at Jim Romanesko's blog but let me give you a taste here:
Dear Reader:
I received your e-mail message. Sadly, I no longer permit myself the pleasure of personally responding to snide remarks from dissatisfied individuals, as doing so inevitably leads to time-wasting arguments and annoying exchanges of insults. Since such encounters often end with the reader complaining to my boss, it seems that this is what rude writers really want to do all along — to provoke me so they can satisfy some inner schoolyard desire to squeal. You may do so now by e-mailing the editor in chief, Michael Cooke, at mcooke@suntimes.com, though I should point out this is a form letter, so his reaction probably won't have the sense of fresh outrage you desire.
Otherwise, I would like to point out — since so many fail to grasp this point — that the piece of writing that upset you is a column of opinion, that the opinion being expressed is mine alone, and the fact that you disagree with or were insulted by my opinion really is not important, at least not to me. This is not a dialogue, this is a lecture, and you are supposed to sit in your seat and listen, or leave, not stand up and heckle.
I do not write the column for people who disagree with me, nor am I concerned with trying to convince them of the falsity of their worldview at a one-on-one level. I've done that for years, and it's a waste of time, both mine and theirs, since such readers are not typically open to ideas other than their own, and cannot even entertain the notion that they may be wrong . . .