THIS week you published an article about the potential appointment of a woman to replace Chris Evans as a DJ on the Radio 2 breakfast slot ("DJ Ball ‘set to replace Evans’", The Herald, September 18). I will be up front about this and disclose as a will-never-listener that I am totally disinterested in the ins and outs of the candidate selection process.
What has outraged me and turned me from a non-letter writer to "disgruntled from Dalmarnock" were the comments made by Brian Beacom about one of the potential replacements, Zoe Ball ("BBC’S obsession with female presenters will backfire", The Herald, September 20). It was difficult to read the piece and not conclude that we must have fundamental structural sexism in our society. That you read this and thought "yeah, fine, let's run it" astounded me.
The opening paragraph invited us to give a female journalist a, "little kicking'" Zoe Ball's crime? Well she's a woman. Oh, and she was in Loaded. A magazine. About 20 years ago.
The description on your Twitter account promises subscribers like me "expert opinion and unrivalled insight". Mr Beacom provided neither. I expect far more of The Herald.
Leah Franchetti,
25 Edmonton Terrace, Glasgow.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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