How do you replace a legend?
Carefully.
Which is why The Virginian-Pilot isn’t rushing to replace the Ann Landers advice column that has graced our pages for years.
Landers (real name: Esther Pauline Lederer), died June 22. She began writing her advice column in 1955. Her last penned column ran Saturday.
Today, The Pilot begins a monthlong experiment aimed at replacing Landers. Through Aug. 24, The Pilot will run columns by four writers, including Carolyn Hax, whose column has appeared Thursdays in The Daily Break since March. Each gets a weeklong tryout.
We’re asking readers to tell us what they think of the columnists. We want to know: “Is the advice useful and rooted in the reality of readers’ lives,” says deputy managing editor Tonnya Kennedy, who oversees features.
This isn’t a popularity contest; the columnist with the most votes won’t necessarily win. Readers’ impressions will be considered, but “editors will make the final decision,” Kennedy said.
Several variables will figure in the selection process, Kennedy says: “Do the columnists address timely and relevant issues? Is the column well written? Is it interesting and/or entertaining? Does he or she give the paper a voice we don’t currently have or speak to an audience that’s underrepresented?”
We start today with “Annie’s Mailbox.” It’s penned by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar for Ann Landers by Creators Syndicate, which distributed Landers’ column. Mitchell and Sugar edited Landers column for 30 and 20 years, respectively. Their column will be “in the same style as Ann Landers,” according to Creators Syndicate.
During Aug. 4-10, Pilot readers will sample Dr. Joyce Brothers, the well-known pop psychologist who’s heard on radio and also does occasional TV and film appearances as herself.
Brothers (real name: Joyce Bauer), believe it or not, once co-hosted NBC’s Sports Showcase.
Now in her early 70s, Brothers, in addition to her syndicated column, also pens several monthly magazine columns. Her books, which include “What Every Woman Should Know About Love and Marriage” and “What Every Woman Should know About Men,” have been translated into 26 languages.
Brothers will be followed by Harriette Cole’s “Sense and Sensitivity.” Cole is a former fashion/lifestyle editor for Essence magazine. She’s perhaps best known as the author of “Jumping the Broom: The African-American Wedding Planner” and “How to Be: Contemporary Etiquette for African Americans.”
Cole, an honors graduate of D.C.’s Howard University, owns Profundities, an image consulting and media train-ing company whose clients have included Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu and Carl Thomas.
Cole’s column has appeared in the New York Daily News since 2001. She “doesn’t preach, she’s never brusque, and she’s always more interested in providing a plan of action than a punch line,” Marianne Goldstein, executive editor of United Media, the column’s distributor, has said.
Hax’s column offers advice primarily to the under-30 set. Her style is “brutally honest . . . witty and forthright,” says a Pilot ad.
Hax is “a 30-something repatriated New Englander with a liberal arts degree and a lot of opinions,” according to the Washingtonpost.com Web site.
If Hax isn’t tapped as a columnist, her column will continue to run each Thursday, says Features Team leader Latane Jones Avery.
BUGGED: Sometimes it’s the small stuff that bugs readers.
That was the case Tuesday when The Daily Break ran a cover feature, “Street games,” spotlighting fun outdoor activities for urban kids.
Like June bug flying. “The bigger the bug, the stronger the kite,” we told readers. And we illustrated the piece with a color photo of a bug.
Savvy readers quickly informed us that we didn’t know our bugs. That’s “not a June bug that I ever saw or flew,” said Sam Welch.
“Whoever put that thing in there should be soundly chastised,” said Chris Jones of Norfolk.
Jones and others said our photo showed a cicada, not a June bug.
“A June bug looks like a Japanese beetle on steroids,” offered another reader.
Said Jones: “One actually is a beetle and one’s actually a bug.”
More specifically: “The cicada is the thing that’s up in the trees doing that e-e-e-e-e-e sound and aggravating you all night long or all afternoon,” Jones added.
As for the June bug, “it’s much easier to catch, but tying a string to its leg is very disappointing as it doesn’t fly very long,” says John Myers of Virginia Beach.
Sam Hundley, one of The Pilot’s most innovative page designers, inserted the cicada photo. He’s from Arizona, and growing up, he says, he always thought June bugs and cicadas were one and the same.
Now Hundley knows differently.
