The JFP Sucks File: 'Might I Be So Bold?'

Historically, the JFP has gotten very little hate mail aside from anonymous missives on local blogs personally attacking our female editors. Our favorites are by a blogger of many names who was kicked off the site for threatening our former visiting reporter Matt Saldaña under an immigration story. He called editor Donna Ladd a “journalistic slut” for interviewing former Sheriff Malcolm McMillin and asked in a headline if Ronni Mott is “a liar, hack or just plain stupid” because she blogged about the Obama administration’s then new recovery.org site.

In the last two weeks, new Features Editor Kathleen Mitchell got a long, nasty letter slamming her for her first serious editor’s note. In it, someone claiming to be a psychotherapist never mentioned what she actually disagreed with, but recommended:

“Dear, you’ve got an awful lot of growing up to do. Might I be so bold as to suggest that you consider undertaking psychotherapy as an avenue from which to launch your investigation of your own self-hatred, which you so transparently project onto those with whom you disagree?”

The writer than said Kathleen’s neck is unfortunate and that she needs to get a new hairdresser.

Then, just before this issue went to press, Editor Donna Ladd got an unsigned handwritten note from someone furious that she had criticized Mitt Romney in her editor’s note last week (“An Inconvenient Joke”), apparently not grokking that columns are, well, opinion. S/he wrote in part:

“I’ve never read a newspaper that was so bias—an openly bias one—the first line starting out making snide remarks—making fun of Romney (sic). … An intelligent editor should know better.” And s/he ended: “I would sign my name but you would print this and that’s a no-no. I can’t trust you.”

PDFs of both these letters are at jfp.ms/feedback.