Thinking Fans Comment Update Aug. 17: Young Jay spent his snack money on Soap Opera Weekly … Professor Cindy calls for higher soap writing standards … Liz V is saddened by the decline of soap journalism … and more. See Comments below. 

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By Marlena De Lacroix

This is a short note to Marlena readers in another terrible week in a year that has become Marlena’s personal “horribus annee.”  My elderly mother is hospitalized again and I had a terrible toothache, necessitating getting a wisdom tooth pulled.  Who could pay attention to soap operas? Yet Hinsey-gate — the firing of the editor of Soap Opera Weekly — loomed large, casting a shadow that still hasn’t gone away.

Many readers have written to me, asking for a comment on the Hinsey story.  Here it is. But first some background:

After 10 years as a soap magazine editor, writer and newspaper  journalist, I originated the Critical Condition column in Soap Opera Weekly.  It was a pioneering critical column in the field and I wrote more than 570 columns, from the magazine’s inception in 1989 until 2001.  Early that year, Soap Opera Digest took over [Read more...]