Something happened last week that made me rethink my long-held tendency to undervalue the My Two Cents contributions that run on the top of the Opinion page.
A quick history lesson. The anonymous comments date back to the mid-2000s, when we switched website providers. Our new host had a feature that allowed readers to respond to a story. And they did.
It didn’t take long for things to get out of hand. People were writing mean or libelous stuff that was getting posted without a review. So we set it up for readers to submit a comment, but it wouldn’t go on the website until someone in the office approved it.
That was usually my job, and I remember spending 30 minutes or more every morning going through the prior day’s comments. Some people wrote just a few words, but others wrote essays.
A couple of years later, Tim Kalich, recently retired as editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth, had the idea to compile some of the comments from his website, plus others that people sent to the paper, into a regular column that he called My Two Cents.
I am much more of a copier than an innovator, so when I heard about what Tim was doing, I set up the same thing for the Enterprise-Journal.
For the past several years, with Facebook dominating the commentary, there was no need for a full column, so I started running one or two of them each day at the top of the Opinion page.
Sometimes people object to anonymous commentary, and I remind them it’s limited to 80 words. I still review everything that comes in, and if you think the stuff that gets printed is mean or unfair, you should read the ones that get left out. I really should have kept some of the craziest ones for my humor file.
I have always known the Two Cents are popular. A good friend told me a couple of years ago that it’s the first thing she looks at in the paper. I was surprised: Not the front page? Not the obituaries?
But I didn’t fully realize the continued appeal until last week.
The one that ran in Wednesday, July 2 edition included a 2020 statement about the new Mississippi flag from Tammy Witherspoon, at the time a state senator.
Her statement was not controversial, but I figured it would be wise to confirm in our computer archives that she had actually said it.
The archives said she had, but the true surprise was a Two Cents comment from back then about the flag.
The writer — surely the same person whose comment appeared this week — was skeptical about Witherspoon’s prediction that changing the flag would mean good things for Mississippi.
“If the Enterprise-Journal kept a time capsule we could check back in five years,” said the writer in the July 2, 2020 paper. And five years to the day, his updated observation was in the July 2, 2025 edition.
He kept the time capsule with the 2020 comment; not me. So I wrote him a congratulations email on remembering something that was important to him, and he replied with a picture of several My Two Cents clippings. It was quite the collection.
Should I have asked if he kept any of my columns, too? I mean, show the editor a little love!
While writing this, it reminded me of another My Two Cents discussion last week. A subscriber whom I’ve known for years called to say he didn’t get his paper last Saturday. And he also said he was upset about a comment last year that mentioned his name.
I apologized. It was a good reminder to keep being careful with those things. And I took him Saturday’s paper.
The big roundup thought is that this is a time of change for everybody. As just one example, two papers per week instead of five.
And yet this little item, this My Two Cents, those anonymous comments that are published at a time when people say far crazier things on social media, holds readers’ attention. It continues to amaze me.
