Cory’s recent column, titled “If you can’t open government, you don’t own it”, didn’t agree with a reader. So he ripped out the page from the magazine, wrote his farewell message below and sent it to us in a nice, old-fashioned letter. Well, we opened it and now we own it.

UPDATE:
First off, we at MAKE want to sincerely apologize for offending and/or angering anybody and for creating the impression that we are insensitive to our readership. We do listen to what you have to say, and we take it to heart. I can’t speak for Dale (he does that himself below), but this was probably an impulsive, flabbergasted reaction to an aggressive act of frustrated self-expression, and as you can read below, Dale’s thought better of his part of it. We’ve decided to remove the scan of the letter from this post but it’s still available as a pop-up, for those coming late who are curious as to what all the fireworks were about.

In true maker fashion, it was one of the participants on this site who showed us a better way we could have played this. Commenter JC3 wrote:

Better Blog Entry

How the blog entry should have read to avoid all this:

“Although we’re always sorry to lose a subscriber, we appreciate the creative method this reader used to express his disapproval of Cory’s article. Here at MAKE we try to avoid politics as much as possible, but wanted to include some commentary on this recent historical election and what it might mean for makers everywhere. As always, we appreciate your criticisms both constructive and otherwise to make this magazine the best that it can be. We will frame this letter and hang it our office as a reminder to that end. Sincerely, the MAKE Staff.”

And, in response, Dale posted this apology:

Yes, I wish now that I had used your words instead of mine, which I will gladly eat. I wasn’t commenting on whether I agreed with the reader, but his decision to write us in a somewhat clever way about his displeasure with the article.

I apologize to those who are so offended. None of us wish to divide our audience along political lines. Whether you like President Obama or not, he was identifying the importance of the maker mindset, and in this issue, we tried to celebrate that mindset as part of the American can-do spirit and its importance to our future.

So thanks to JC3 and to everyone who participated in this discussion. We’ll definitely be mindful of the concerns and criticisms raised here and try to do better in the future.

And after we’re done eating the crow and cellulose, we hope to get back to the business of making cool stuff, something I think we can ALL agree on is why we’re here.

All the best,

Gareth Branwyn
For MAKE