Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. “It’s like a soap opera,” she said. “You start watching and you need to know what happens next week.”After John Collinge’s wife, Zandra, died last year, he felt compelled to share the news with the same group. The response, he said, “absolutely touched me and helped me through the sense of loss.”None of these widely scattered people — Mr. Pochiraju lives in Hyderabad, India; Ms. Cathcart, in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Ms. Robinson, outside Brisbane, Australia; and Mr. Collinge, in Bethesda, Md. They know one another through the online comments section of The New York Times’s Metropolitan Diary, a column that draws tens of thousands of readers each week.

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Persons: Sivaram Pochiraju, Janet Cathcart, ” Lorie Robinson, “, ”, John Collinge’s, Zandra, Pochiraju, Cathcart, Robinson, Collinge, — Locations: “, Hyderabad, India, Chapel Hill, N.C, Brisbane, Australia, Bethesda, Md, York Times’s