The Feedback Loop

If you publish these days, you get e-mail. That's the way it goes.

Some is positive or provocative, some is negative or nasty. Some brief, some endless. Some the heartfelt sentiment of the writer, some blog-generated rants by folks who pretty much say the same thing and may not have read what you wrote, keying instead about a mocking description of what someone said you wrote.

Well, that's life. I enjoy the feedback--most of it, anyway, although it sometimes reaches a volume where no human being, at least not one who has to make time for eating and sleeping, could read it all. If you don't like sharp feedback, you can go write on a cave wall.

Otherwise, welcome to the electronic age.

In the last few days I've been overwhelmed by the response I've gotten to my first-person piece about the devastation in New Orleans and the media's challenge in keeping the story alive. I've gotten hundreds and hundreds of e-mails, from people who live there, grew up there, have family there and have volunteered to help hurricane victims there. I've also gotten mail from around the country from folks who are just concerned about the NOLA situation. Some of those with a personal connection to the city have written me long, thoughtful, passionate letters about the losses that they or family members have suffered, about feeling abandoned by the media and the rest of the country, and other aspects of the crisis. There's a viral aspect to this as well, with people forwarding my piece to all their friends, some of whom have written to me as well.

It is impossible not to be touched by many of these messages, and I've tried to write back to everyone I can.

I've been on the receiving end of not-so-flattering waves of mail as well, so I know the pluses and minuses here.

I bring all this up because Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has written a piece about getting 3,499 e-mails in response to his pan of Stephen Colbert's Beltway performance, a column that itself is generating plenty of blogging:

"Some were friendly and agreed that Colbert had not been funny. Most, though, were in what we shall call disagreement. Fine. I said the man wasn't funny and not funny has a bullying quality to it; others (including some of my friends) said he was funny. But because I held such a view, my attentive critics were convinced I had a political agenda. I was -- as was most of the press, I found out -- George W. Bush's lap dog. If this is the case, Bush had better check his lap.

"It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever 'it' may be. All in all, I was -- I am, and I guess I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation.

"What to make of all this? First, it's not about Colbert. His show has an audience of about 1 million -- not exactly American Idol numbers. Second, it marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column ."

I will confess that the worst part about some attacking e-mails is not the "you are an idiot" genre, but the ones that assume you have an agenda, a sack full of ulterior motives and you're in bed with fill-in-the-blank.