Hearing From You

Sometimes we can surprise ourselves. Just recently it occurred me that even after 26 years at the helm of a consumer publication, including a dozen years as editor of US Airways Magazine, I get great delight in hearing from readers. In the course of creating a monthly magazine, I’m in constant touch with those who have a part in creating it: the publisher, the airline liaison, the contributors, PR folk, writers, bloggers, and, of course, the members of the magazine staff. These are the people I expect to work with. But the reader writing without solicitation from Boise, Bangor, Birmingham or Boulder is an event, however small, that for me never gets tiresome.

The element of surprise is twofold: Where is this reader? And why is he or she writing? In most cases, a reader was struck by something they read, or they wish to amplify an article with some extra bit of insight or information. One New York couple used one of our travel features as an itinerary for their European vacation and wrote to thank us, and to add a few restaurant suggestions. Some notes are simply amusing, like the one from a young boy in India who loved airplanes and route maps. He asked me to send copies of all American inflight magazines so he could study the airline pages of each one. Still other letters are, in a word, bizarre. A recent handwritten note from an inmate in California proposed a new form of communication using his painstaking creation of a cryptic alphanumeric code.

So when a reader letter arrives, there’s a small part of me that’s almost childlike. One would think that after a few decades such a fancy would have worn thin. Not so. Like a kid, I still wonder what’s inside that little package.

Posted By: Lance Elko

Comment(s): 1  |  (+) Add a Comment

Alex said on 21 Jan, 2010 at 5:13 AM
Lance,

Add this to the stack of surprising messages, I suppose!
I've been poring through old Compute's Gazette magazines and am admiring the work that old mag must have been. Thanks for your hard work back in the day and all the best in whatever future endeavours you may undertake.
-Alex from Canada

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