Annie offers advice dear to our hearts

Since Monday The Beaumont Enterprise has contained a new column and has been missing one of the old ones.

Dear Abby has been replaced by a column called Annie’s Mailbox.

The concept initially might throw up a wall of resistance and/or cause a reader’s blood pressure to rise, but the change is more superficial than substantial.

Historically, pages of The Beaumont Enterprise contained the Ann Landers column. Dear Abby, written by Ann Landers’ (actually Esther “Eppie” Lederer’s) twin sister Abigail Van Buren (really Pauline Phillips), ran in The Beaumont Journal, the long-time afternoon newspaper.

When The Journal ceased to exist as a daily publication in 1983, the Dear Abby column was discontinued. Then, when Ann Landers died in 2002, Dear Abby seemed to be the most logical replacement advice column.

Problem is, Pauline Phillips, now 90, has long been too incapacitated to actually write the column. Instead, it is authored by her daughter, Jeanne Phillips. Since Ann Landers’ death, her daughter, Margo Howard, also has begun authoring an advice column called Dear Margo.

Annie’s Mailbox, named in honor of the well-known long-time advice columnist, is authored by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, former editors of the Ann Landers column.

So, we haven’t stopped publishing a popular advice column, we’ve just chosen to publish a different one, which we think features equally qualified authors. It’s just one more example of a necessary change in a constantly changing industry.

One reader has called to say she noticed and she didn’t like it.