Last Updated: March 23, 1997
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No, my number doesn't run in the paper each day.
However, I write frequent proactive notes to readers (and approximately monthly columns) in the Mercury News.
In both cases, my phone number, fax number and e-mail address appear, as they do for every columnist at the Mercury News.
The most remarkable response occurred when I explained to readers - on the day that the picture ran - why we were running a photograph of Richard Allen Davis, the Polly Klaas killer, making an obscene gesture when he was found guilty during his San Jose trial. I also invited readers comments.
I believe that preempting the criticism made all the difference in the world. By a 2-1 margin, the 1,200 readers who responded approved of our running the picture. Even better, hundreds expressed warm sentiments about "my" newspaper, the courtesy demonstrated by the explanation and the ability to comment on a tough decision.
Some advice: If you're expecting a big response (and it's tough to predict; I wouldn't have expected 1,200 readers responding to the picture mentioned above), definitely expand your voice mail capacity. Nothing is worse than having readers respond to a full mailbox.
Also - and I haven't tried this - you might warn folks in advance that you're probably not going to respond personally to their comments but that they still are important to you.
Finally, if you really plan ahead and hope to columnize, you'll ask readers to tell you if it's OK to print their names and comments.
We do print the name and number of our reader representative each day. And, in a shocking stroke of contemporary journalism, this year I added an explanation to our names and titles. (What in the world does a publisher or executive editor do, anyway?)
As an aside, we find e-mail forums very useful. When we reported that the U.S. government apparently looked the other way as Contra fund-raisers were linked to crack cocaine in the United States, we set up an elaborate Web site (it's received hundreds of thousands of hits on some days) inviting reader comment - and the reporter responds to their comments and questions.
Speaking of Web sites, we list the names and e-mail addresses of hundreds of
staffers. We also list departmental e-mail addresses. One person in each department
is assigned to monitor and respond to such e-mail. 
