Jeditorial #17

The Jobs of the Week also went bye-byes because it was kind of redundant. If you want a job, go to SJS. I’m not Seek.

But the one section that has been a constant thorn in my side is the one page I thought I would never loathe. I will come out right now and say it: I hate the letters page. My very sensible and well-informed opinion of letters can be summed up in one almost-word: meh.

Last year we often had three pages dedicated to your free speech rights, but after the first few issues drew few letters and me being the freedom oppressor I am, I made the decision to reserve just the one page for your inane and uniformed opinions.

On numerous occasions I get letters whining about something that have no factual evidence backing them up, which means that every time I printed a letter I got 3 in response telling me why the original person was a complete moron and had their facts all mangled up in an imaginary world that revolves around them. Even worse are the replies that say mean things about me for printing your stupid rants without checking the factual content first (something I don’t have to do, by the way) and they hurt my feelings.

I have found too often that people write to me about these problems before even talking to someone that can actually do something about the problem. Want an example? Earlier in the year someone was having a go at UniCentral and AUT Online saying they were student created programs. Of course they aren’t and the person who wrote it had their facts all munched up. If they had taken the time to talk to the people that work there instead of just coming crying to me 1) they would have got an answer to their questions, 2) I wouldn’t have gotten any angry(ish) emails asking why I let such misinformation be printed, and 3) we would all live happily ever after.

Basically the letters fall into four categories:

1. The “something costs too much” bitch

2. The “IT stuff won’t work” bollocks

3. The “smokers suck/leave smokers alone” backlash

4. The “Ryan is so hot” brilliance*

Together with the awful spelling and grammar, I have toyed with the idea of feeding all letter pages to the pigs but decided to stick with the one as the number of letters I would get for having no letters, while being kind of funny in an ironic way, would have annoyed me even more than I usually am.

So if you wrote a letter that didn’t make it in the mag it was probably because it was either too stupid, too boring, too offensive, or I just forgot about it (this is actually the most common reason for stuff that doesn’t make it in, articles included, as I get over 50 emails a day).

And then there are those annoying letters from readers that go something like “your comments about (something) hurt my feelings, boo-hoo, I’m sad and have no sense of humour.” We haven’t got that many this year compared to last year (oh boy were you sensitive last year), but we’ve got a couple.

Last week I received in my inbox possibly the stupidest letter of the year. It was an angry tirade (and I mean angry) at the Pop N Good column. For those who have never read it, PnG is a light-hearted look at all things pop-culture related. What was the content that drew such anger? It made fun of New Zealand’s lack of celebrity and popular culture. The letter writer found this most infuriating and let rip on his patriotic soapbox about how awesome NZ is. For the record, the worst thing Pop said about NZ was “One of the things that sucks about New Zealand is how far away we are from famous people.” I’m all for constructive criticism or disagreeing with a point of view, but all he did was swear and abuse. I don’t have time to waste on such inane things.

In ’07, Fiona, the editor, had just got back from America and was amazed by the obesity problem over there so she made a joke with the line “jumbo people”, which made someone cry. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the word “jumbo” means “big”, and “people” means “people” and this concludes our intensive three week training programme. The point is people get so sensitive about nothing when there are so many more important things that you could be doing than getting all hissy over some wisecrack. Let it go.

In the end, all a letters page has become to me is one less page of content. One less page of something probably semi-intelligent, more researched, and most definitely written better and with correct spelling and grammar that I don’t have to waste time getting a right of reply to.

Don’t get me wrong, I still want your letters, but surely you can produce some better quality ones? Letters can be funny, intelligent, entertaining, critical, and raise some serious issues that need to be addressed, but my advice is to talk it over with someone who knows more than I do, and if you still want to send something in, at least think about it first.

Addendum. Ok now the gods are screwing with me. I just finish writing this and get a couple of good letters. If the guy who wrote the Pope one is reading this, hilarious. Sorry I couldn’t fit them in this week.

*Admittedly most of these were written by my stalker, annaloren