I recieved an email from Sarah today and several of you guys may have also. I won't put the email here but I will put a copy of my response to it and her next email to me here. I think it explains quite a bit.
I am so sorry for anything that I may have said about your journal. If you had been around I think you would have realized why people were so up in arms about the editors picks that week. Only one of the picks met the editor's criteria for being in that spot. The other 4 ALL mentioned Jean Chatsky and her book in the few entries they had in their journalsEditor's Picks
You are so very right that AOL can do just about anything they want. However for them to pick an employee with a journal that has only one entry for their number 1 journal pick it is just wrong. Most of the journal community was upset over this. Yes, a few of us over reacted to what was perceived to be AOL using their employees to get us to use some of their services.
I do apologize for what I said and am terribly sorry for hurting your feelings. I do hope you will also try to look at the whole thing as one weird incident and not judge us as unfairly as we obviously did you.
kathy
Then I received this from Sarah:
Kathy, Thanks so much for your note! I feel a lot better. It was just so bizarre, I hadn't looked at my journal in a few weeks actually, I've been so swamped, and there were all these derisive notes and even a parody!!! I don't know much about the community of people who do journals, and how the journal pick works, so that's part of the problem too. I do accept your apology. What happened, if you and others want to know the background, is that I have a friend who works for AOL and she was finding AOL users around NYC to participate in the video with Jean. They asked us what our financial questions were and then they videotaped us with Jean. It was very helpful since we did get to ask our own personal questions, even though of course they were using it also as a promotional tool. They tried to pick a variety of people for the taping so that the problems would apply to a wide range of users. Then, they asked us to do a journal, which I guess now they did so that they could use them as the picks of the week to promote the bill pay and other services. That's why it looked so weird that we all mentioned Jean Chatsky! But none of us were AOL employees, in fact we are just a bunch of random AOL users, and all of our info was for real. Now you know the real truth! If anyone wants to know you can certainly pass it along. :) Sarah
2 comments:
Well I'm very pleased to see you've decided to post this. So many people on the fringes of J-land just don't understand our level of commitment and community. Yes, we take issue with such travesties and the Jean Chatzky thing caused bad feelings on a very broad scale. Perhaps Sarah will now have a better idea of how we were all affected by that scandal and realize that the criticism was by no means focused on her. ¤Holly
I have a problem with this Sarah's willingness to be part of an AOL marketing program with no looking into the community she was suddenly, unknowingly thrust into. That's JMO, and I'm still glad that I wrote my parody-- I think that's the one she mentioned. --Albert
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