Letter Columns Waste of Time

A Newspaper letter column can be extremely interesting and worthwhile: alternatively, it can be a complete waste of time. Which of these categories a given newspaper's letter column will fit into is dependent almost entirely on the efforts of the Newspaper concerned. This point has been made several times by Ian Cross when speaking of the newspaper in "Column Comment."

In particular, Cross has hammered away repeatedly at one particular point: he insists that when a writer asks a question, the newspaper must do its utmost to answer the question. The merits of such a course are obvious. The writer has his question answered, so he is happy, and the newspaper has made its column more interesting, and so benefits all its other readers directly, and itself indirectly.

The last time that he mentioned this subject Cross was able to quote a few letters written to Wellington newspapers which the newspapers concerned had taken the trouble to answer. It seemed that his point had got across.

Maybe it has, maybe it has not. But it unfortunate that whether or not this particular point has been taken, the newspapers have not really entered into the spirit of running a worthwhile letter column.

The Evening Post, to take a specific example, is very lazy in th running of its letter column. On March 23 a reader wrote in taking exception to the pronunciation of the word "furore." He had heard it pronounced on TV as "few-rory," with the accent on the second syllable. This pronunciation. he alleged, was peculiar to New Zealand, and was incorrect. And so his letter ended. He had raised an interesting point, but there was a catch—he was incorrect in his assertions. The pronunciation that he had heard is not peculiar to New Zealand, and it is not incorrect.

But these facts did not stop the Evening Post from printing the worthless letter. The Post went blithely ahead and printed it, and left it as it stood. It was only through the good offices of a writer, two days later, who wrote in with the correct pronunciation, that this error was brought home to the readers of the Post.

This, of course, is only one example. But to anyone who is interested, and who looks at the letter columns of our daily newspapers periodically, the story will not be an isolated one. The sooner the dailies take an interest in their letter column, the sooner they will be worthy of the attention of their readers.—G.E.J.L.