Julie Cohen on why there haven’t been any letters in The TAB

by | Mar 4, 2019 | Newton, Newton TAB | 7 comments

The Newton TAB’s Julie Cohen sent me an email this evening with the message line “incorrect info” in reference to my post from last week about lack of letters to the editor and local columns in the print edition.    Her full response is below.

Mark Marderosian was very much paid for his submitted cartoons. Andy and I filled out his invoices. You wrote they were free.

I suppose you could say his cartoons “disappeared” but it would be more accurate to say they disappeared because he chose not to submit them anymore. There’s a back story to that, but it’s old news. 
 
If there are no letters it’s because people submitted after deadline, they were too long and the writer chose not to cut them, they were personal attacks, etc. 
 
For columns and letters there are the same word limits no matter if someone is a resident or councilor. If they decide not to cut them, that’s their decision. Asking someone to cut their letter or columns, as you know, is not the same as rejecting free content. 

7 Comments

  1. Scott Wolf
    Scott Wolf on March 5, 2019 at 5:02 pm

    That reply seems disingenuous. For at least a decade there were, reliably, a half dozen letters that made publication. I can’t believe that not a single letter is deserving of publication.

  2. Ted
    Ted on March 5, 2019 at 5:49 pm

    Not sure disingenuous is the right word. It sounds more like Julie is toeing the company line. There’s probably more going on behind the scenes than we know about.

  3. Dan Foley
    Dan Foley on March 6, 2019 at 9:03 pm

    Also seems very unlikely that everyone missed the deadline. Plus, given that it’s a weekly, wouldn’t a letter that missed the deadline just be added for consideration for the next issue? The letters couldn’t have all been so timely that they lost relevance in a week.

    But good news for those of you who braved the cold for a trip to the end of the driveway — there is a letter in this week’s issue!

  4. Gail Spector
    Gail Spector on March 8, 2019 at 8:37 am

    Julie’s response rings hollow to me. Former editors received letters that were past deadline and/or exceeded the word limit, yet letters to the editor often filled so many column inches in the paper that they jumped to another page. Late letters were held a week and readers usually shortened lengthy letters. Even without those letters, the section was robust.

    Letters took a lot of the editors’ time because there were always so many submissions about the all the news in the city. Maybe GateHouse has set limits on the length of the section, but more likely people aren’t writing because they no longer know what’s going on in the city and/or they don’t think anyone will read their efforts.

  5. Andy Levin
    Andy Levin on March 8, 2019 at 11:37 am

    “… more likely people aren’t writing because they no longer know what’s going on in the city and/or they don’t think anyone will read their efforts.”

    Exactly…

    #NewtonintheDark

  6. BOB BURKE
    BOB BURKE on March 8, 2019 at 12:16 pm

    I stopped reading the TAB a month or so back. Sounds like they are in the process of “pulling the plug” on the final life support system that was keeping this once proud paper only technically alive. The vigil begins shortly.