Have your say, but focus on issues not personal attacks
When I pick up a newspaper or magazine, the first section that I go to is the Letters page. It informs me of the issues of the day and also gives me an insight into the quality of the readership and hence the publication.
In this respect, I must say that I find The Nation rather disappointing.
You have about a dozen regular letter writers, presumably farang retired in Thailand, who probably rush to the Letters page each morning, to see whether they have been “published” or not. Sadly, what is written reflects not only the smallness of their existence, but also the poor quality of your sub-editing.
Almost without fail, one letter writer attacks another by name. I can’t remember seeing this in the many, many newspapers and magazines I’ve been reading over the last 50 years.
In a letter with derogatory references to another writer, why can’t your sub-editors remove the person’s name and replace it with “as another correspondent wrote”? This is the practice in most other newspapers and magazines.
If you did this, about a dozen people will be deprived of their raison d’etre and The Nation’s sales will drop by a similar number, but the quality of the discourse on the Letters page, will improve considerably.
Percy Aaron
Vientiane
