Casey Seiler, Times Union editor in chief and vice president, at the Hearst Media Center in Colonie.
I get letters; I get emails and I get phone calls. Some of them are nice and some of them are less so, and every so often someone reaches out to say they’re dropping their subscription to this newspaper.
Regardless of their reasons, my usual response is to say, “Sorry to lose you — and thanks for supporting local journalism to this point.” But last week, I received a long email from a reader whose argument fairly called out for response.
He said that while there were multiple reasons for the end of his decades of subscription, “the recent Presidential election has made my decision.” He proceeded to make several assertions that were either untrue or wildly inaccurate.
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I read this email just before sacking out, and tossed and turned as I considered how or even whether to respond. I woke up the next morning and extensively annotated his email, topping it with a brief introduction that began, “It seems like canceling your subscription is going to be unfortunate for both of us.” I'm going to share some of these — not to dunk on the guy, but because I think this exchange is emblematic of a wider problem.
To my ex-subscriber’s assertion,........