Dear Editor:

Mike: Perhaps you should have talked to me about the editorship. We could have put “time-outs” and “no blood-letting” clauses in the contract, right after you agreed to do away with the gossip columnists – all of them.

Lee Schoenbart

Dear Editor:

Rob DeKoven writes a great column, but he’s a bit off the mark about the Union-Tribune and its policies about gay dating.

Although I cannot imagine why anyone gay would want to advertise for a date or relationship in the middle of all those lily-white, right-wing conservative listings, the print version of the U-T offers/offered a “Just Friends” category to the community for many years that was palatable to their readership. But in this high-tech, instant gratification age, using print tends to make DeKoven’s point here moot.

However, if you go online to the U-T’s Web site, SignOnSanDiego, and scroll to “singles” near the bottom of the home page, dating/mating season is wide open to anything and everyone. The section does not discriminate and even lists all the gay bars—from the ghastly (Chee-Chee) to the trite (Montage).

Many of us would embrace a community publication with the editorial quality control of a U-T or Reader if only such a publication would invest more time and effort into fact-checking as opposed to accepting copy on face value without question and slapping it into the pages to make deadline.

Lee Schoenbart

Dear Editor:

I recently read a piece in your Magazine and it brought me to your web site for the first time. My primary reason was to find out more about a columnist, or theater critic rather, and could find no information about her or any other columnist in your magazine. As for me, I always find it helpful to be able to read a bio and examine their qualifications especially if they are providing advice and or critiques.

After coming to your site and finding no such information I decided to respond, however it took me a great deal of time, and I really about gave up, to finally realize that your "contact" information is waaaayyyy at the bottom of the left column in tiny letters along with "About GLT" below your copyright info. Well I guess it could be that you don't want people to be able to contact you folks but if you do, any web designer, and I know many, would tell you that you should put that info in a highly visible position so that readers can easily contact you.

And lastly, one of the main reasons for wanting to contact you was indeed to make a complaint regarding the theater critic Jean Lowerison. In her recent review, GLT 9/16/04 issue, of "Thief River" playing at Diversionary Theater she made a few negative comments about the play which, if she believes to be true, is fair but she made a remark about the actor Dale Jeter as being "chubby" and I find any such remarks as personal and disgusting and has no place in ANY review of a movie or play. I have pointed this out to many folks in the theater community and all were aghast at such a comment. You'll recall that Karen Carpenter started down her spiraling affliction with anorexia because of such a remark by a critic so one can see that such remarks can be quite deadly. As a reader of yours and of many other gay papers, I would appreciate it if you would speak to her, and all of your columnist/critics, to assure that they keep their reviews professional and not personal.

J. William Widick