Posted by LLB on April 19, 2002 at 15:37:10:
In Reply to: P.S. To my previous message posted by Natasha Kern on April 19, 2002 at 14:35:54:
Natasha -
You may "gather" what you will about the purpose behind my bringing this article to the attention of AAR's readers, but it has nothing to do w/increasing hits. We receive approximately 2.1 million hits per month at this site, and this number grows steadily but constantly as we strive to bring romance readers information about the genre, including reviews, commentary, interviews, and discussions based on items in the news.
Earlier this year we basically "broke" a copyright infringement story in terms of being the only romance outlet to follow through the piece from beginning to end - even RT mentioned us in an article they ran in their print publication in April.
You also mention "flaming" in your post; a good number of posts really walked the line, and most of them that went over the edge were ones attacking both myself and AAR - they were left online because to have removed them would have smacked of censorship (and because I'm a big girl and can take care of myself).
We encourage all posters to act like grown-ups and to use the manners their mothers raised them with. We don't always succeed, but in a controversial issue as this, I don't want to be the "posting police." Even when my own integrity, honesty, and professionalism was impugned, I decided to leave those posts online and feel that only once did I let my anger get perhaps the best of me.
As far as I'm concerned, AAR has acted both honorably and with sound intentions. As a columnist, I keep my eyes and ears open for news regarding the genre and authors in the news. If RLH was misquoted or had her remarks taken out of context in a feature article, the opportunity has been offered to the newspaper to make that correction. If perhaps she said things that she didn't believe would be interpreted as they were, then she'll have learned a valuable lesson about interacting w/the media.
Given that AAR has given RLH mostly good reviews - including a DIK Review, which is our highest honor - in the past (both for her secular and religious writing), there is no hidden agenda, no axe to grind, and nothing going on here except a discussion of an article that upset many readers (and authors) in its interpretation.
RLH has defended herself admirably here in terms of tone; it's some of her supporters who have probably damaged their reputations (and, by association), hers by the tone they took in an issue that she was capable of responding to (and did) all by herself.
I've said before that authors negotiating themselves through the Internet need a degree of skill that is difficult to achieve and that sometimes it's simply better to leave things as they are. I'm not sure what your connection to RLH is, but I know you've now posted four or five times and essentially said the same thing. Enough is enough at this point - if you have nothing new to add to the discussion other than to say that those who disagree w/your viewpoint are being petty, than you probably should stop.
As for me, until I hear back from the Life editor at the Idaho Statesman, I won't be posting on this topic again.
LLB
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