Every year about this time I make a plea in this space for you to help me fill it. Sure, all of us here at The Evening Sun (well most of us, anyway) like to write these weekly missives and tell you what we think – but really, more importantly, even – we want to know what you think.
Providing a forum for community discourse is, to me, the second-most important function of a daily newspaper (behind gathering and presenting the news, of course). And it’s on this very page that that discourse takes its most compelling and legitimate form – in Letters to the Editor.
There are many ways in which you, the reader, can interact with the newspaper. You can pick up the phone and speak to a reporter or an editor, you can send an e-mail, you can participate in the ES Forum online, you can stop by the office, you can call (or nowadays, click on) “30 Seconds,” or you can kibitz about it amongst yourselves. But the most effective way to get “make your voice heard” as we like to say, is to write a Letter to the Editor.
Letter-writing isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of forethought. It takes time. And most likely it takes a whatever-the-price-is-now stamp. But nothing will get people talking, and thinking, like a well-written Letter to the Editor.
Having a reader’s forum is a time-honored tradition in the newspaper business. You can always judge the health of a newspaper’s entrenchment in its community by the volume and content of its Letters to the Editor. That’s why it pleases me that rarely a day goes by that we don’t publish at least one, if not more, on our Viewpoints page (don’t bother to look up; it’s the page you’re on right now).
Sure, I admit it’s a lot easier to go with ‘30 Seconds.’ All you have to do is pick up the phone, say your peace, (or in the case of evesun.com, type it in a little box) and remain in the comfort of anonymity. One could well argue that it’s a double standard that we require a signature on a letter and yet you can turn the page and say the same thing anonymously, but I’d argue that the two forums are entirely disparate. “30 Seconds” has its virtues (and when I think of some, I’ll be sure to tell you), but the comments therein, even when they are insightful and well-put, don’t have nearly the weight of a Letter to the Editor. The phone-in line and its online evil twin are largely for entertainment purposes (if you take it all seriously ... well, you’re probably not reading this column), and it’s hard to pack a Socratic debate into a half-minute message. But the Letters to the Editor section is as serious as it gets. Here you have plenty of space to expound on the topic of your choice, and by signing your name to it, you have the respect and admiration that goes along with standing up for your convictions.
Our “Letters” policy is rather straightforward, and appears on this page just about every day. Here’s some ancillary info:
• We prefer letters to be typewritten, but will still accept good old-fashioned cursive as long as it’s legible. And please use 8 1/2 x 11 paper – Post-It notes and napkins make me doubt your sincerity.
