'Ask Amy' Writer Reflects on a Year of Syndication

By: Dave Astor The impact of new technology on age-old issues of behavior and relationships is among the things that stand out for Amy Dickinson as she looks back on her first year of syndication.

Dickinson is the advice columnist who succeeded the late Ann Landers at the Chicago Tribune in July 2003. Tribune Media Services picked up "Ask Amy" two months later, and now syndicates the daily feature to more than 100 newspapers.

The columnist noted that spouses have strayed forever, but now there's the wrinkle of Internet porn. Party mishaps have happened since parties were invented, but spilling wine on a laptop wasn't a problem during Landers' heyday. And bad manners are nothing new, but rude cell-phone users are a relatively recent phenomenon.

Dickinson has addressed all these topics. In one column, a reader asked for suggestions about what to tell cell-phone users who yak loudly and publicly about personal matters. Dickinson half-jokingly recommended blowing a whistle. Then the columnist asked for reader suggestions -- as she does on occasion -- and received about 300 responses during the ensuing week. Some responders said people forced to listen to a loud cell call should retaliate by joining the conversation. For instance, if the cell-phone user asks the person on the other end of the line what time they should meet, bystanders might say: "7:30 would be good."

Dickinson, 44, said another strong memory from her first year of syndication is the resiliency of readers. "I expected to be overwhelmed by people's problems," she told E&P. "But many people are trying to fix things in their lives. They're not giving up. I love that spirit."

But hard-hitting advice is necessary for some people, including a 22-year-old woman having an affair with a 45-year-old married man. "I hammered her," said Dickinson. Among the advice Dickinson gave: "Do not get involved with married men more than twice your age. Do not get involved with married men of any age." She also hammered the man, calling him a "middle-age snake."

"At the end of the day, urging someone to do the right thing and make a moral choice feels good," said Dickinson.

The columnist receives 200 to 300 e-mails a day and more than 100 postal letters a week, with nearly half the advice seekers male. Readers come from all age groups, but Dickinson believes the average skews younger than it did for Landers. "I hear from a lot of teens," she said.

As someone who's syndicated, Dickinson of course gets letters from all over the country -- and has noticed that, even in this mobile age, the tone can vary by region. "The letters from Long Island are very different than the ones from Orlando and Philadelphia and Seattle and Dubuque, Iowa," she said.

That regional flavor comes through in "Ask Amy," because Dickinson tries not to edit reader questions too much. "The letters in some advice columns sound a little generic, a little cleaned up," she said.

Dickinson runs three letters a day, with the first one usually the longest and most serious and the last one shorter and perhaps quirkier. "Some newspapers lop off part of advice columns, so if they just run the first question and answer, at least there's a meaty issue," she said. Also, Dickinson runs letters on the most "important, urgent" topics Mondays and Tuesdays and "loosens up" as the week goes on. On Sundays, she often publishes letters having to do with subjects such as spirituality and weddings.

"If you see my office, it's an exercise in chaos theory," Dickinson said with a laugh. "But a lot more thought goes into organizing the column than people realize."

Dickinson -- who answers urgent letters even if she doesn't publish them -- offers advice based on her own experiences and also uses her reporting skills to gather information from experts and other contacts. She provides 800 numbers on occasion, and plans to train for and possibly staff a hotline to see what it's like.

Though the content of each "Ask Amy" letter obviously differs, most focus on relationships in some way -- including those between spouses, between lovers, between friends, between parents and children, and between co-workers.

Dickinson, who works at the Chicago Tribune office, spends six days a week doing her seven-day-a-week column -- with no assistants even to handle mail. She also writes an occasional feature story for the Tribune and does commentary for National Public Radio. Still, the single mother makes sure she finds plenty of time for her teenage daughter. "I'm not a workaholic," said Dickinson. "I rarely take work home. I'm a parent and want to have a home life."

Her hobbies include reading, seeing movies, listening to live music, and cycling with her daughter on one-speed bikes. "And I run, but I'm not a runner," she said.

Given that she's related to 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, does the columnist compose verses? "No," she said, "but I wrote a country-western song! My daughter writes poetry."

Dickinson has certainly done plenty of other writing in her career. She penned a column on family issues for Time magazine,a column for AOL's News Channels, and freelance articles for magazines and The Washington Post. Dickinson also worked as a commentor for "Sunday Morning" on CBS and as a producer for NBC News.

Before all that, she majored in English at Georgetown University and grew up on a small dairy farm in New York state. One of her "Ask Amy" clients is her hometown daily, The Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal. "I offered to bring a pie to the newsroom if they ran my column," she said. "I brought doughnuts instead. I really value my presence in my hometown paper. And they give the column great placement -- right next to 'Dilbert.' I'm tickled by that!"

TMS said other clients include The Sun of Baltimore, the Boston Herald, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Detroit Free Press, The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday of Melville, N.Y., The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Oregonian of Portland, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Seattle Times, and The Washington Post.

What was it like replacing the legendary Landers at the Tribune? Dickinson said it was mostly a positive experience: "It got the column a lot of attention -- and got people reading it."