Letter to Editor Myrna Blyth, Ladies Home Journal (1997)

©1997, 2013 by Dallas Denny

Source: Denny, Dallas. (1997, 15 July). Letter to Editor-in-Chief Myrna Blyth, Ladies Home Journal.

I doubt this was pubished in LHJ.

Ladies Home Journal’s circulation has decreased from 4.5 million in 1998 to 3.2 million today.

15 July, 1997

ATTN: Myrna Blyth
Editor-in-Chief, Ladies Home Journal
100 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Dear Ms. Blyth:

I happened to channel-surf onto C-Span a week or so ago as you were speaking on women in the twentieth century. You were talking about the internet, dismissing it by saying that in your opinion people primarily turn to and will continue to turn to print sources (i,e, I suppose, LHJ) for information and entertainment, and that electronic forms of communication will never replace them.

]I found your remarks reminiscent of a buggy whip manufacturer of the early part of the century, patronizingly claiming that there would always be a demand for her product because automobiles would never supplant horses for transportation. In short, I consider your lack of foresight to be 20/20. If you had been paying attention, you would know that print sources have already taken a big hit because of television and the internet, and the “big three” networks are no longer the big three because of cable. New technologies eventually cause quantum and often unforeseeable changes in our culture.

There is nothing sacred about ink on ground-up wood fiber. The idea of a space-consuming, resource-wasting print journal which is offset printed and shipped to distribution sources will seem increasingly quaint fifty years and maybe even twenty years from today, when information and entertainment are delivered to the electronically and viewed, listened to, and interacted with in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

Most publishers are taking the long vision and restructuring so they can take advantage of emerging technologies. If Ladies Home Journal doesn’t, it will become even more of a relic than it already is.

]As for myself, I look increasingly to the internet for information and news, and less and less to television and print sources.

Sincerely,

Ms. Dallas Denny
P.O. Box 33724
Decatur, GA30033-0724
aegis@gender.org