I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times

Never Done: I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times

I used to love reading the New York Times Magazine. I loved Lives, The Ethicist, the Interview, Recipe Redux. Slowly it's all changing -- and in my opinion for the worse. I haven't enjoyed the Ethicist since Randy Cohen left. Same goes for the Interview. The new layout of the Magazine seems like it's geared for shorter and shorter attentions spans (what was so hard about reading something one page long?) and I pretty much was only holding out because I loved to read Diagnosis, by Lisa Sanders, M.D. And now they've gone and screwed with that too.

I once had a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe. I was about 11 when I wrote it, in defense of John Denver after the Globe had given him an egregious review. I don't actually remember what I wrote, but it must have been strong, because they picked it up. My mother was the editor of The Harvard Post for 25 years, so I grew up listening to her talk extensively about letters to the editor; she took them seriously, and grappled with her responsibility to her readership. I did not grow up to be someone who writes letters to the editor. In fact, I don't think I've written one since my letter in defense of John Denver. So it came as a surprise to me that I felt strongly about something to write my first letter to the New York Times.

In hindsight, I think I rushed it and didn't build a case for the very strong statement I ended up making. On the other hand, I kept it under 150 words and I spoke from the heart, the way they recommend. It's a little hard to evaluate from an ethical/Mussar perspective -- (maybe if Randy Cohen were still writing the Ethicist, I could get a little help here) -- but I have always believed that mediocre evaluations bring mediocre results, so I tend to go for glowing or scathing, and let the chips fall where they may. Without further ado, this is what I wrote:

The first thing I do when I get the Magazine is to look to see if there’s a Diagnosis column, my excitement heightened by virtue of it being an irregular regular column. But my excitement waned quickly when I tried to navigate the new flow-chart layout and I had to endure the reader response segment in this week’s column. I miss Lisa Sanders’s intimate narrative prose, which has been replaced by shaded circles and serviceable text inside rectangles. If you must go to such lengths to appeal to an internet-based readership, maybe your next Think Like a Doctor contest could be to diagnose the cause of death of the Magazine itself.