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Jun212008

What’s In A Name? You Have No Idea …

Filed under Uncategorized by nick pappas at 3:35 pm

After more than 30 years in this business, I thought I had seen and heard it all.

Names and circumstances may change from time to time, but there aren’t too many complaints that get tossed my way these days that I haven’t  heard at least once before.

Until earlier this month. To make things worse, I didn’t have a quick answer, either.

Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from one of our readers who was upset over a letter to the editor we had published a few days earlier. The letter was written by a local taxpayer angry over how his money was being spent in the public school system.

The caller wasn’t upset about the content of the letter; if that had been the case, I merely would have suggested that he write his own letter in response.

No, he was upset by the name and hometown printed at the bottom of the letter.

Why? Because it was the same as his. Same first name. Same last name. Same hometown.

But it wasn’t him.

To make matters worse, he was in the process of interviewing for a job in the education field and was worried the content and tone of that letter might hurt his chances of being hired.

Getting three phone calls from people asking him if he was the author of that letter didn’t help his state of mind, either.

And he didn’t want to call any more attention to the situation by writing a letter of his own.

So, given we had put him in that undesirable situation, he wanted to know what I planned to do about it.

Fair enough.

But first, a quick explanation of how the letter process works here.

Once we receive a letter intended for publication – whether by mail, fax, e-mail or the Web – I send it along to one of our editorial assistants for verification.

We require all letter writers to include their name, full address and a telephone number, and we call each of them to ensure that they, indeed, wrote the letter in question. Only then does it go into the active letter file for consideration.

When the letter gets published, we use only the writer’s name and hometown – no street address; no telephone number. We don’t publish anonymous letters or letters with just nicknames, either.

Of course, that really wasn’t the issue here. It wasn’t that someone posed as the angry caller to get a letter published. Not at all.

As it turns out, this wasn’t even the first time it had happened. A review of our electronic library found that the letter in question was one of nine we had published from this gentleman – or perhaps by yet another person from that community with that name – since December 2000.

What are the odds? Apparently, better than I would have thought. And it isn’t like we were talking about a “John Smith” or “Mike Jones” here. The name wasn’t unique, but it wasn’t that common, either.

So, back to the question at hand: What can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again so we don’t, in his words, do “damage to one’s reputation?”

Well, if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn’t be reaching out to you by writing this column now, would I?

One of the caller’s suggestions during our initial conversation was publishing telephone numbers with the letters. In this way, he reasoned, it might be easier for readers to figure out which “Jimmy Johnson” actually wrote the letter.

To be honest, I didn’t think that was a good idea then, nor do I think it’s a good idea now. Part of my job is encouraging people – particularly new people – to participate on the Opinion page by writing letters for publication.

The prospect of getting dozens of phone calls from people calling you a “jerk” might not be the best incentive. Ditto if we began publishing actual street addresses.

I suppose another option would be to require all letter writers to use their middle initial – assuming they have one – as a way to distinguish one letter writer from another if they share the same name.

That might help, but even that has its limitations. Unless you happen to be privy to someone’s middle initial, that wouldn’t be particularly helpful.

Finally, what about publishing e-mail addresses, at least for those letter writers who have them? That might help distinguish two people of the same name, assuming they don’t both use “jsmith” and have the same Internet provider.

As you can tell, I’m open to suggestions, which is the whole point of this writing exercise. So, please let me know — either by posting a response here or e-mailing me directly – if you think you might be able to help.

God knows I could use it.
 

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor of The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.

Viewing 11 Comments

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    Dear Mr. Pappas -


    I was thinking the middle-initial thing myself at first, but you're right - how many people actually know one's middle name?


    Most folks do have e-mail these days, and publishing e-mail addresses might be a good idea - it differentiates people, and it's (relatively) non-invasive, privacy-wise.

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    I do not think that publishing a more complete address, telephone number or email address is the right way to go.


    I once wrote a fairly controversial letter which had religious overtones, and I then received letters in the postal mail with Bible verses in them. No return address on the letter with the Bible verses, of course!


    If the person who sent me those letters had taken all of the trouble of looking up my name in the phone book and getting my mailing address, imagine what I would have suffered if more complete contact information was included.


    People do have the same names, and sometimes they live in the same town, it is a fact of life.


    I think the person complaining should have written a letter to the editor for publication saying that there were two people in town of the same name and that he was not the writer. He could have simply asked you to put a clarification in the paper.


    The fact that he had not done this, and did not want to do this means that he was not willing to take that step to clarify it, so it can not be that important to him.


    By the way, this is one of the reasons why I use the name "maddog".

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    What about printing the writer's age next to their name? (John Smith, 42)

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    What about printing the writer's age next to their name? (i.e. John Smith, 42)

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    I have had a few letters published, and I have received anonymous mail from people who called me names, and phone calls from strangers, but since I live in a small town, my name is easily recognizable.


    I have accepted that such behavior is part of the price we pay for putting our identity out in the open, but adding phone numbers makes it too easy to call the writer on the spur of the moment, looking the number up may be enough to deter some people.


    And please, DON'T publish my email address, I get enough spam as it is, publishing it will put it out there for spambots to mine, as well as making it too easy for nasty letters to be sent.


    Name and town are enough, any more information in too much information.

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    There is always a remote possiblitiy that when a letter is published in the paper that someone else may have the same name and be located in the same town. It does not happen every day and is nothing to lose sleep about. Lets put the current situation in prespective|: A taxpayer fed up with the ongoing waste in the education establishment writes a letter expressing his outrage over his hard earned tax dollars being poured in a black hole. By chance another guy with the same name and living in the same town tries to capitalize on the education monopoly and applys for a job with the school district. Someone at the district makes the connection and accuses the applicant of being the same simpleton who had the nerve to challenge the status quo. Lets keep the mourning down at this crime against humanity. All the apllicant had to do is explain its not him and those are not his views. There is no need to place anything more than a name and town on a published letter. Every thinking taxpayer should be angry over the monopoly held by public education. The quality continues to stagnate and cost continues to go up. The parents of New |Hampshire should be free to decide how and where their children are educated. It is not right to force parents who prefer to send their child to a private or Christian school to have to pay for the public system as well. The irony is many small private schools are cheaper than the average cost of educationing a child in the governent schools and do a better job. Its kind of funny....we test lawyers, doctors, airline pilots. To get a licence we need a written and a driving test. However the bureaucrats in the SAU.sare opposed to standardized testing as measure of progress. They are determined to avoid any type of fixed measurement and comparision between what works and what does not. The free market will solve many of our educational woes. Too bad Wal Mart wont get into the teaching racket!

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    Before posting a letter, the research team might just check to see if this name is used by more that one person in that town. If it is, ask the sender to use some identifier to make them stand out as THAT person and not another. Their choice, age or address or email. No more confusion!

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    This must be a real problem in China, where the large majority of people share fewer than 100 different family names.


    "According to the Ministry of Public Security, China has nearly 300,000 people named Zhang Wei (wei meaning “great”) and more than 280,000 share the name Wang Wei. One percent of the Chinese population, or 1.3 million people, are named Liu Bo, meaning Liu the waves."

    Click here to read that article.

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    Our hot linking doesn't seem to be working; the article quoted above comes from the publication Beijing This Month. URL:

    http://www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/business/...>

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    Mr. Pappas,


    Your assertion that you contact all letter writers that your paper intends to publish is plain wrong.


    When I went online to check out the 30 April 2008 edition of The Telegraph I was quite surprised to see that my letter to your paper was published.


    I was surprised because I did not receive any telephone calls or even a response to my email account from your editorial staff.


    Maybe a little procedural tightening up is in order? Eh?


    Besides actually contacting all letter writers, I think the idea of having letter writers provide their middle initials would be a good idea.

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    • v
    Very good, congratulations article

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