September 03, 2006
"We’re still open to the idea of a letter [to the editor],
.... but we will not publish a letter that implies any sort of misbehavior by [our reporter] Ms. Flanagan."
After the New Yorker published an article on P.K. Travers (the author of Mary Poppins), Victoria Lawson wrote to them pointing out how their reporter had relied heavily on her biography of Travers (and on documentaries based on that biography), and yet made almost no acknowledgement of that fact within her article.
The New Yorker replied by saying that they were willing to publish a letter to the editor from Lawson, but not one that criticised their reporter or their magazine. After all, wouldn't she much rather use this template, which thanks the New Yorker for their kind (in)attention to her hard work and research? Links from this metafilter thread and comments.
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This is a better post than the MeFi FPP. The New Yorker article was moderately interesting but it was obvious that the writer had cribbed from the book and had done no actual reporting on her own.
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This is a very odd series of emails. I've never heard of an editor going so far as to write a letter for someone. It also seems incredibly odd that, rather than publish the criticism and respond in the letter column, the editor is dead set against publishing any criticism of the author. I'm seen numerous magazines that publish letters from critical readers and the editor or even the author of the article will followup their own response. Is the New Yorker so afraid of tarnishing their image that they will not allow even the hint of criticsm to appear within its pages? I really don't understand people some times. It would seem infinitely easier to publish the letter and a response or to publish some correction that basically lies and says something like, "during the editing process several references to so-and-so's work were mistakenly excized." Instead the editor would rather spend so much time and effort with stomping of feet and holding of breath untill the issue just goes away.
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Well, it's Caitlin Flanagan. If they start publishing every letter critical of her work, they'd probably run out of space to print actual articles. Her work is generally full of holes and based on her own neuroses.
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Flanagan writes piece after piece about you are a bad mother if you go to work, yet also has written about how she has never changed a sheet in her adult life because that's for the maid to do--what's not to love about this woman?
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No womder she likes Mary Poppins.
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Go back to work, you bad muthas. I'll fix the sheets.