Feedback Loop

It’s new-issue Monday, and there is nothing as exciting or scary as setting your work of the previous month before a jury of 65,000 peers. We tend to get feedback of three kinds. First, there are complimentary emails from readers who like what they read, and these are the ones we read repeatedly, we print them out and tape them onto the refrigerator, we high-five each other outside our cubicles, we go back and read the issue with a warm glow in our hearts, we buy flowers for our loved ones, we call our grandmothers just to say hello, we ride to lunch on a cloud of fizzy egotism. Aren’t we great?

The second sort of feedback we get is from smart readers who trouble-shoot the new issue for smallish, stupid errors (hopefully, never major ones—knock on wood!) on the order of screwed-up phone numbers, incomplete information, misspelled names, and that sort of thing. These are always terribly embarrassing, and we are suddenly plunged into a deep funk of despondency and self-loathing. Maybe we are working in the wrong industry? Who are we trying to fool? We really ought to be fired! We could always sell the house and go into sheep farming. We begin to hyperventilate. Then, just in time, a few more happy emails arrive, and we begin to feel better. We vow never to repeat the same inane mistakes. Stern warnings are issued, wrists are slapped. We will do better. We must do better. Someone will get fired next time, we swear, but ain’t gonna be a next time! Perfection is only a month away!

The final sort of feedback we get is just strange. There are occaisonally readers who think we lean one way politically, while they lean politically the other way, and it incenses them that our views seem to contradict their views. Now, to be perfectly fair, we DO have strong preferences about the way things are versus the way we think they ought to be. Despite banging on with our unsolicited opinions about “objectivity” and “news” and “media” and “blogging” and “neo-cons,” we wish to clarify that we are merely observers with (we hope) informed opinions about the industry in which we work. The magazine is not really a news vehicle per se, not in the same way that a daily or weekly newspaper is. That’s not our gig, that’s the other guys. So we’re more comfortable about have a special take on any subject we may take up. But see here: We think one of the mortal sins of working in media is succumbing to shrill, predictable, party politics. We wish to be correct, of course, but more important than being correct is being a pleasure to our readers. We think there are very few pleasures in shrill, predictable, party politics. We try to find new, interesting, fresh ways to say true things.

But our point is a more mundane, interesting one. For some reason, each time we receive a note from someone who is unhappy with their perception of our politics, that person without fail does not sign his or her name, nor leave any return address. It is almost as if they are ashamed of their own opinions. We feel fairly confident in calling this, too, a sin—though it’s probably a venal one. A person who lacks the courage of her convictions makes us sad, and slightly irritated, and we make the grumpy decision not to publish these sorts of letters, even when they are very smart or funny (which they often are). This is a short-term satisfaction; if you want to express your opinion to our other esteemed readers, you need to sign your name so we can at least make sure you’re who you say you are. But in the big picture, it’s depressing, because it represents a breakdown in one of the fundamental processes of a civil society: The thoughtful public colloquy about controversial and difficult issues. That’s pretty lame, and karmically speaking, just one step above anonmyously vandalizing the walls of public bathrooms.