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February 03, 2006
Question No. 5 (We get letters)
How do you decide which letters to print?
During public appearances and meetings with readers who visit the Monitor, this is the question I am almost always asked.
I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that the Monitor devotes more space than most newspapers to letters. The second, a logical partner of the first, is that Monitor readers are so outspoken, well-spoken, sharp, cranky, warm, funny and thoughtful that their letters get high readership. Every survey we have ever done confirms the popularity of the letters columns.
I have been handling Monitor letters to the editor for nearly 25 years, and it is one of my favorite tasks. In an age when fewer and fewer people write letters, I get more than a dozen almost every day. Increasingly they come by e-mail, but that makes my job easier. It means we can publish letters in a timelier manner, and it tends to mean – note the “tends” – that the letters are shorter. Most people see e-mail as a medium for quick notes.
From my perspective, short is good. Less is more. The more you can boil down your point, the sharper you will make it and the more readers you will attract.
Now, to get to my point . . .
We publish almost all the letters we receive from within the Monitor’s circulation area on issues on public interest. This is a wide berth, and when in doubt, we err on the side of publication.
I edit most letters, which means I fix spelling and grammar, correct obvious errors and break up overlong sentences. Nearly every letter you read in the paper has been cut. The main purpose for this is to create more room for other writers.
We have a couple of dozen regular letter writers. This does not trouble me as long as they are not repetitious. I am relatively strict in enforcing the rule that no writer may appear in the paper more often than once every two weeks.
We publish some letters from elsewhere in the state. These are almost always on state issues. Often they are about Monitor content since that content is now available online.
We publish a few letters from outside the state, especially those that comment on Monitor content or make a good point that I have not seen in other letters.
Occasionally, a national interest group floods us with letters, presumably after someone has linked members to a Monitor story through the group’s website or a blast email. This has happened most recently with the anti-Justice Souter gang and with divorced fathers angry about custody and child-support issues. We run only one or two such letters to give readers a flavor of the mail.
And occasionally, at the editor’s (my) whimsy, we run letters from far-flung places. Even though the internet is no longer a novel technology, I remain amazed by how many corners of the Earth the Monitor reaches.
Dec. 29 was a red-letter day in this respect, as, one beneath the other, we published letters from Thunder Bay, Ont., and Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.
Posted by Mike Pride at February 3, 2006 06:07 PM