The idea is innovative among newspaper Web sites. The goal is to answer all reasonable requests from the Web sites' users. The Republic is not entirely alone.
Some large newspapers do operate online customer service departments.
Newsweek Interactive has a 3-person customer service department, for instance. But with smaller papers' sites, a less formal approach to customer service is typical. As news Web sites grow and become more complex, the need for real customer service grows. Before the customer support department started taking responsibility for them, most messages were routed to appropriate people or departments. When you don't answer their e-mail, you're basically saying that you don't care.