Is Amy or Annie an Ann?
The AP story began, “Newspaper readers who once turned to Ann Landers for advice can now ask Amy,” and went on to say that “Dickinson’s new column will fill a void created by the death” of Lederer.
No, says Mnookin. He points to the Tribune’s July 9 story introducing Dickinson and reads what editor Ann Marie Lipinski had to say: “Eppie’s passing was a painful loss for readers. Her death created a void and we spent a great deal of time talking with readers about how to, or even if to, fill that void. It didn’t take long to realize that this was something that readers wanted from the Tribune and we were determined to deliver it with a new and distinctive voice.”
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True enough, the Tribune was once Lederer’s home paper and now it’s Dickinson’s. That’s important to Dickinson, who can be taken seriously by the media as the advice game’s next big star because of the Tribune Company’s promotional muscle. But Ann Landers was huge long before the Tribune took her in; the Tribune was just a place for Lederer to hang her hat. “She had a home paper so her staff would have office space,” says her friend Rick Newcombe, who syndicated her. He points out that Dear Abby, the column Lederer’s twin sister wrote, hasn’t had a home paper for decades.
In the beginning, when a home paper did matter to Ann Landers, home was the Sun-Times. Marshall Field’s paper owned the name and the feature, and hired Lederer in 1955 to keep the column going when the nurse who’d been writing it died. Lederer succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams, and the Field Syndicate was soon peddling her column to newspapers across the country.
Visit the Creators Syndicate Web site, and you’ll find Annie’s Mailbox touted as the legitimate heir. “One year ago, the nation bid farewell to a beloved icon: Ann Landers. Today, Annie’s Mailbox fills the void….Those are no small shoes to fill….Kathy and Marcy, the longtime Ann Landers editors, are giving [readers] what they crave. ‘They are the perfect pair to continue the tradition of sound, sparkling, tell-it-like-it-is advice,’ said Ann Landers’ daughter, Margo Howard.”
The Tribune’s own profile of Dickinson, which was written by Rick Kogan, showed admirable restraint. Eppie Lederer and Ann Landers weren’t even mentioned until the fourth paragraph. The fifth brought the passage that so moved Seth Mnookin, Ann Marie Lipinski’s description of the Tribune’s “painful loss” and decision to fill the “void.” Further along was a reference to the other 1,200 newspapers that carried Ann Landers, and it wasn’t quite made clear that “Ask Amy” won’t start out in any of them.
