I think it's a good thing to go from monologue to dialogue. Theater actors, stand-up comics, and live bands have had to deal with that kind of instant feedback for centuries, and I think they've come out alright. Sure, there are lousy audiences and hecklers at times, but perhaps the writer just needs to have a thicker skin, and not let it get to them -- the good folks will get it, and the trolls will be out there, too. In showbiz, they say "break a leg" -- so, for you, I'd say "break a nail!" to reflect the different demands of a keyboard-driven gig.

For too long, the culture creators have come from a particular social class, embodying a standard set of values (you know, Ivy League-educated, upper-middle class background, etc.) -- meritocracy in action, or so we're to believe. And as a result, it shapes not only what they write about, but what they see, too, what they're even able to perceive (I'd loosely term that the David Brooks Effect, given his astounding cultural myopia). I think it reflects the lack of real diversity in the American intellectual class -- the Best and Brightest simply don't have all the right answers, but don't try telling them that! They matter, because, well, because they're content providers, that's why!

That disconnect between meritocrat and audience is probably why polls consistently show the American public to be ahead of their representatives on issues. So long as they're all hunkered down in DC, they're okay, but outside the Beltway, they're lacking, forced to deal with the rascal multitudes, and afraid of it -- no wonder Bush's handlers never have unstaged appearances for the man; he's afraid of that instant feedback.

Similarly, the culture creators operate from East and West Coasts, twin poles, and too often like to pretend that there's nothing in between. The voiceless majority are supposed to shut up and be passive recipients of received wisdom -- that's how it's been for too long. It's been done to death; the Net lets us all participate, and I think you shouldn't fear it or worry about it, just enjoy the ride. The medium is the message, right?

I enjoy reading the letters as much as the articles, even some of the abusive ones (Locutus springs to mind - often abrasive but funny, intelligent and to the point). Salon should welcome these because they attract readers almost as much as the articles themselves.

It's a good point made by others that writers like Sidney Blumenthal get little feedback because of the magisterial authority of his writing, whereas some other writers can attract a lot of often well-deserved flak. But it's also true that some threads, even supposedly 'factual' ones, do just degenerate into chaos. For example, the response to any article making vaguely critical observations about Israel is guaranteed to end in a welter of ridiculously polarized views, unanswerable and selective pseudo-erudition, and wild accusations.

But this is a good thing as it shows not that there's anything necessarily wrong with the article, but that there's something wrong with people's understanding of the issues and Salon is right to highlight it.

Another illusion shattered:(

...NEVER SAID HE INVENTED THE INTERNET, YOU RIGHT-WING APOLOGIST TURD.

There. I feel better.

I can no longer bear to read Salon's open letters, so forgive me if this repeats a prior posting, but it seems to me there is a simple solution to the problem of nasty, ill-considered letters. Require that letter-writers sign their full names; after all, the article-writers sign theirs. Anonymity only enables nastiness, and people may step off the vitriol and tone down their attacks if they are forced to own their words.

I appreciate Gary's article because I post frequently in Salon forums. Sometimes I post because I'm genuinely interested in, or pissed off by, the article. Sometimes I post just for the fun of responding. I like to write. I like to use my argumentative skills. Salon's easy interface lets me do that, and that's cool.

I've been using online forums to argue since I was about 12, long before the "internet" as we know it existed. I used a Commodore 64 to dial up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) and argue with locals about politics, religion, and anything else at the super-slow rate of 1200 bits per second.

I've always wondered if Salon's writers read their letters. I've never seen any of them respond, so I assumed they were either staying mum, or simply avoided reader feedback as unhelpful (unless an editor read a letter that alerted them to an important point). I also entertained one other notion -- that Salon writers might enter the forums under their pseudonyms to defend their own work. Gary mentions a writer who did that at The New Republic and got canned for it. I wonder if Gary would disclose it if he knew of a Salon writer doing the same? Is there an editorial policy about this? If writers are getting hurt by reader letters, why don't we ever see them responding in the forums?

The "Since You Asked" column seems particularly well-suited to reader feedback. The advice-seeker gets well-thought-out, artfully written advice from Cary, then gets a whole smorgasbord of amateur advice from the readers (many of whom also criticize Cary's advice, or accuse him of making up the letters, which makes me wonder why that column does not carry a disclaimer asserting that all letters are real, but I digress). This is the one area where I've seen direct responses from the "LW" or Letter Writer.

I am more apt to write in response to a bad article than a good one, or to a controversial article rather than an "important but boring" (to borrow a phrase from The Week maagazine) one. For this reason, I think it's up to Salon's editors to establish sensible guidelines in terms of how they evaluate an article's success in relation to its reader response. I also think if they want to increase the separation of the Official Article from the Rag-Tag Masses, they would do well to give the reader-response section its own look and feel, making a clear separation between the journalistic side of the website and the interactive side. Or not....depending on how close to a real Salon you want Salon.com to be.

I've been both the bad guy and the good guy in the forums. I was the "good guy" for a few Stephanie Zacharek reader areas. For some reason, there seem to be some frustrated lit-crit drop-outs who pick apart every metaphor and slightly off phrasing in Zacharek's movie reviews. I defended her writing and eventually was accused by other writers of actually BEING Stephanie Zacharek. My denials, of course, were just further proof that I was Zacharek's alias. Funny how that worked.

I have been the bad guy for a couple of Debra Dickerson articles. I think Dickerson is a dangerous form of writer because she's an excellent wordsmith and that lends her a sense of authority. But I question her reasoning skills, which seem to be twisted into knots or based on premises that even Dickerson seems confused by or unaware of. In at least two articles, it bothered me that Dickerson was foisting what I would consider misguided (at best) views on the reading public -- such as the claim that Barak Obama is not really "black" and thus hasn't earned the voting benefits of blackness, or that the woman who tried to publish O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" was somehow a feminist hero. I was pretty harsh on Dickerson, but it was because she seems to need to have her ideas challenged, and Salon's editors seemed to have shirked that duty.

[continued next post]