Staff report

GALLIPOLIS - Beginning with the Sunday Times-Sentinel of July 23, Ohio Valley Publishing Co. newspapers will be featuring the advice column Annie's Mailbox by former Ann Landers column editors Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar.

Annie's Mailbox will replace the Dear Abby column on a daily basis. OVP publishes the Gallipolis Daily Tribune, The Daily Sentinel and the Point Pleasant Register.

Annie's Mailbox is distributed by Chicago-based Creators Syndicate.

In 2002, the nation bid farewell to a beloved icon in Ann Landers. Today, Annie's Mailbox fills the void left by the loss of readers' favorite advice giver, mother figure and confidante.

Those are no small shoes to fill. Yet, immediately after Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar began writing Annie's Mailbox on July 28, 2002, the letters came pouring in. Because of the increase in e-mail, Annie's Mailbox now receives as much mail weekly - 10,000 letters and e-mails - as Ann Landers did, and surprisingly, 60 percent of it is from men.

Clearly, readers are still looking for sensible, creative answers to their everyday (and not so everyday) problems, and Kathy and Marcy, the longtime Ann Landers editors, are giving them what they crave.

“They are the perfect pair to continue the tradition of sound, sparkling, tell-it-like-it-is advice,” said Ann Landers' daughter, Margo Howard.

As the fourth anniversary of Annie's Mailbox draws near, millions of Americans start their day with the column. “We left Annie's Mailbox out of the Gazette by accident, and readers really complained,” recounts Rosalie Earle, managing editor of the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette. “Boy, did we hear about it!”

The feature, which appears in more than 700 newspapers with 60 million readers, is a nationwide favorite of newspaper editors.

“Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar make Annie's Mailbox an oasis of common sense, sound advice and wit. It's essential daily reading,” lauds Rick Kogan, Ann Landers' former editor at the Chicago Tribune.

He is not alone. Jim Giametta, executive editor of the Tyler, Texas, Courier-Times Telegraph, agrees: “Annie's Mailbox follows in the Ann Landers tradition, but it has a fresh approach to a proven successful column.”

Perhaps Margo Howard put it best when she said: “Combining the generational difference and their breadth of experience working for my mother, Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar meld the Ann Landers approach with a new-century, modern spin.”