Your newspaper, your letters

At a recent gathering of readers of the paper, we were asked about letters to the editor. Specifically the questioner wondered whether there was an outer limit to the number printed each week, beyond which we would not be able to publish someone’s letter because there were too many in the hopper. 

The answer came back that we aim to publish all letters to the editor, and that we make every effort to make that happen. Sometimes an opinion column will have to go to make room for a letter that unexpectedly arrived at the eleventh hour,  but within the deadine. 

The importance we attach to your letters is worth a little elaboration. While The Lakeville Journal has been dedicated to serving its community for 126 years, our recent change to a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization adds a new dimension in our thinking. Besides allowing for tax-deductible contributions, becoming a nonprofit means much, much more. 

The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News is your newspapers, not only because they are distributed in your community, but also because you have the opportunity to have a stake in their survival. These are trying times for local newspapers as traditional revenues — advertising and circulation — come under pressure, and consequently leading more and more local newspapers to consider the nonprofit model. Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post and now a professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, wrote last week about how the rebirth of local journalism depends on all of us. Those exact words were his headline on an opinion piece asserting that local news may not be dying, it may just be evolving. He points to the proliferation of nonprofit local and state news sites. We have them right in our backyard: The New Pine Plains Herald, and as of Oct. 12, the Kent Good Times Dispatch returns in an online format “to bring local news back to Kent.” (See story here).

Another Washington Post alumnus, the late Robert Estabrook, who in 1971 retired from The Post as editorial page editor to buy The Lakeville Journal, also opined on the paper’s respect for letters to the editor. Almost half a century ago, on Aug. 25, 1977, he wrote the following:

“About Letters To The Editor”

Several readers have commented that some letters appearing in The Lakeville Journal’s Open Forum are too long. We agree.  Although the instruction box stipulates that letters over 200 words will be subject to condensation, we plead guilty to not having enforced the rule rigorously. Simple lack of time.

Our feeling is that the letters column performs a very precious function. It is the place where readers can talk back, say what is on their minds, make suggestions and champion causes.

Because we believe deeply in the importance of this interchange of ideas, our policy is to print all intelligible letters that do not appear libelous or offend good taste. We edit letters to confine them to a single topic, however, and we do not allow any writer to monopolize the Open Forum.

Still, some letters are too long for the most effectiveness.  Occasionally a subject will warrant detailed treatment, but in many instances shorter letters are more interesting and better read.  Since it requires a great deal of time to condense letters with the care they deserve, in self-defense we ask help from the writers themselves in keeping their epistles to reasonable lengths.