{"id":11231,"date":"2009-07-02T22:31:04","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T02:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=11231"},"modified":"2013-10-02T21:11:20","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T01:11:20","slug":"how-to-respond-to-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/02\/how-to-respond-to-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"How to respond to criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the many magazines I edited for Sovereign Media a decade or so ago was titled Sci-Fi Universe<\/i><\/a>. It had originally been edited by Mark Altman and published by Larry Flynt, but Flynt eventually grew tired of losing money, and so went looking for a buyer, which turned out to be Sovereign.<\/p>\n

The magazine had been Altman’s dream project, but he had no ownership interest in it, which meant that when the magazine was sold, he did not come along. He was out and I was in.<\/p>\n

(Most editors have no stake in their magazines, even when they are their babies. Want another example? My own Science Fiction Age<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

He wasn’t happy about it, and neither were a number of the readers. Sci-Fi Universe<\/i> had been an edgy magazine molded in the Film Threat<\/i> style. But since it was felt that however much fun that attitude might be, it also contributed to the publication’s lack of profitability, Sovereign reinvented it to be more traditional entertainment magazine. We did try to keep some lightheartedness to it, though, and I pulled in Paul Riddell to rant each issue in a department called, appropriately enough, “Rant.”<\/p>\n

\"SciFiUniverseMediaWhore1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the first few issues, the letter writers pounded me. One, as you can see in the letters column above, went so far as to tell me:<\/p>\n

Scott Edelman, you are a media whore. You may sleep well, but no one with any intelligence reads you.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can’ t remember whether or not I did happen to be sleeping well at the time, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is\u2014<\/p>\n

Did I weep at this accusation? Did I moan? Did I respond by publicizing the e-mail address and home phone number of my critic, as was recently done by Alice Hoffman<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"AliceHoffmanTweet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No, I did not.<\/p>\n

Did I damn my critic, as Ayelet Waldman just did to one of her reviewers?<\/p>\n

\"AyeletWaldemanTweet\"<\/a>
\nIf you know me, it will come as no surprise that I didn’t do that either.<\/p>\n

For these are not proper ways to respond to one’s critics. As you can see by my response above, instead, I rolled with it, answering the letter writer that I was amazed he’d been able to ferret out that Media Whore was my true title at Sovereign Media. I even had the art director mock up a fake business card which I had published in the lower left of the page.<\/p>\n

And you know what? When it was time to have a new set of business cards printed, I had 20% of them done up like so:<\/p>\n

\"SciFiUniverseMediaWhore2\"<\/a>
\nAnd I handed them out proudly.<\/p>\n

Which just goes to show that some people, however intelligent they might be, can’t read their reviews without wincing or listen to their critics without attacking. I can. I guess that’s because I have a thick skin and a sense of humor. Both qualities which Hoffman and Waldman would do well to develop.<\/p>\n

And if they won’t listen to me, they should at least listen to Brad Meltzer, whose recent YouTube video (which you’ve undoubtedly already seen elsewhere over the past few days, but it’s just too good not to share again) is an object lesson on how one should deal with critics.<\/p>\n