Randy Cassingham's Blog

After running some reader letters, David in Maryland wrote in reply: "How come you never run any of them that are from people who are not enamoured of you, if it is considered a 'letters to the editor' space?"

Ah, how short some memories are! I asked him where he was when I ran angry letters about my "Austin Powers doll" story, my "anti-zero tolerance" editorials, or the Clinton Fornigate issue. I actually gave the negative letters a larger percentage of the space than they represent in the mail volume as a whole.

"Fair enough," he responded. "I actually was around for them, and believe I sent you a supporting letter about one of the issues. I have decidedly mixed feeling about this whole thing, wondering why I am even sending a criticism to you. I really admire what you have done with This Is True and HeroicStories. It is not at all easy to build a subscriber base of hundreds of thousands of readers, so clearly you are offering a product many, many people really value, enough so that so many become paying subscribers. I have no doubt that you spend at least a full-time job looking for stories, working on the books, replying to personal email such as this one, and more." Just so. But bottom line, if people hate True, they don't subscribe -- at least for long. It's rather natural, then, that the vast majority of the letters are complimentary.

Obviously, not every reader will agree 100 percent with every story or the comments I make on them. That's OK with me: if everyone agreed on everything, this would be one heck of a boring world! On the "Austin Powers" story and its aftermath, for instance, Les in California wrote, "Whether or not I agree with your point of view is immaterial. I enjoy reading something written by someone who has taken the time to formulate an intelligent opinion on a topic. It's truly unfortunate that in these days of Internet madness where any 22-year-old can be a millionaire overnight, that there are so few people who take the time to READ, ABSORB, and REFLECT on current events. I like to think that I do this and I think you do too. Rock on."

Yeah, baby -- shagalicious!