Dishing Out Advice
By Andrea Otanez

Readers are isolated and searching for cultural touchstones, said advice columnist Carolyn Hax.

Dan Savage said the Lewinsky-Clinton affair was a pivotal moment in journalism: The media learned that readers can handle sex.

Amy Dickinson said she’s "beating the drum for kindness and tolerance."

The three advice columnists dished for editors and writers at two sessions during AASFE’s 58th annual convention.

Punctuated by Savage’s raunchy rhetoric, the three picked their way through a key question: What do they see and what can features editors extrapolate about their readers’ states of mind?

The bottom line: Readers need help. Daily newspapers need to take risks and loosen up to keep and win over readers, especially the younger ones.

Hax, whose "Tell Me About It” column is distributed by The Washington Post, said many of her readers are just out of college and feeling alone. "They don’t have any bona fides," she said. They are interested in themselves first and foremost and especially want advice on the "mysteries of relationships."

Savage, whose sex column "Savage Love" appears in weeklies across the country, went right to it: "That ‘family newspaper’ albatross is killing you."

He told the 30 or so attendees that newspapers need to treat their readers as adults who, yes, think about sex. Bill and Monica showed that “the public is more sophisticated about banging an intern than we think.” Write to and for adults, not 5-year-olds, he said.

Dailies can show people where to meet one another. Where are the stories on and about the Internet, bars and clubs? he asked. Newspapers can fill a role as meeting place.

The columnists said readers are looking for ways to behave -- sometimes permission to behave badly -- in a world cracked open by the Internet. "There is a dialogue that goes on that lets readers know what decent behavior is" amid the oceans of information, said Savage.

Dickinson, who arrived with only 15 minutes left in the first hour-long session, said she doesn’t write about etiquette. She addresses relationships and behavior in her “Ask Amy” column distributed by Tribune Media Services. A dialogue emerges from her readers’ questions.

Hax said she tries to educate her readers and answer their questions by being matter of fact without being graphic. Savage, laughing, said he tries to be graphic without being matter of fact.

Hax and Savage said dailies are afraid of the readers they should get rid of. Readers who don’t go away after any initial shock and anger start to come around.

“They get used to something different,” said Hax.

Andrea Otanez is an assistant features editor at The Seattle Times and a 2004 AASFE fellow.