Getting your election letter published

As the election season heats up, so do letters to the editor. And with letters come complaints that we favor Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, McCain supporters or Obama supporters, or that letters from one place on the political spectrum take longer to get published than another ...

We also receive complaints that we “edit” letters rather than allowing them to run as written.

To address the first point:

No, we don’t favor letters from any political viewpoint. In fact, we hope that the “Letters From Our readers” will include voices from across the political spectrum. That’s what makes them the most interesting.

But there is one type of letter we do favor, and that addresses the second point:

Letters that are short, clear, civil and cite credible sources for information presented as fact generally get published fastest. Letters take longer when they are too long (we have a 200-word limit), lack clarity (that’s a diplomatic way of putting it), resort to name-calling or make unsubstantiated claims. With those, letters editor Karen Troianello generally calls or e-mails the writer and works with that person to correct the problems.

So yes, they are edited.

Let me give you an example of a letter we received in late September from a woman in Selah (with the writer’s name omitted to protect the guilty):

Dear Sir,
I was at the fair here in yakima, I stopped at the obamas stand and ask two questions/
1)when obama became a senater ,he standed up in front of everone. by right he is not a senater as he used the kraind (i am sorry but im not a very good speller) THE PEOPLE AT THE stand didn’t know that he didnt us the holy bible to be come a senater
2) they did not know that he removed the flag from the plant and put a white flag what a big O ON IT. He when to see the muslime. he had time for that but he didnot go and see are boys who has been over there. IS he ashame of the us are forfathers fight for freedom. if are fathers are proud two ues the holy bible two become a senater for the President. Then why can/’t OBAMA
THEN THE CONESTATION CAN NOT BE USED IN THE SCHOOLS

Honestly, it took us a couple of days just to decipher what this letter said.

Setting aside the two rumors included in the letter — a great resource for rumor-checking, by the way, is www.snopes.com, which includes both of these — this one demonstrates pretty well why letters don’t always get published exactly as they are received.

Our goal is to publish as many of your letters as possible, which is why Karen spends virtually all her time working with letter writers and with editorial page editor Bill Lee and me to get letters publishable.

Some letters — re-read that one above — take longer than others.

And some writers demand that their letters are published exactly as written, or else they withdraw them.

Fortunately, most writers want to get their letters in the newspaper. And we do publish a lot of them. In fact, through the end of September, we published nearly 1,450 so far this year.

So here’s a reminder about the rules:

• To be considered for publication in the paper, letters need to be no more than 200 words. (Longer letters, up to 500 words, can be published only online at yakimaherald.com.)

• Writers are allowed one published letter a month.

• Letters may be edited for grammar and clarity.

• Letters should be on topics of general interest to readers in the Yakima Valley, and must be in good taste.

• How do you feel about rhetorical questions? We don’t like them — particularly when they are used to make a point that the writer can’t document — so we generally will ask that they be rewritten as a statement. (An example, “Is Sen. McCain still an unapologetic philanderer?” Check that one out on www.snopes.com, too.)

• Letters that defame individuals, ethnic or religious groups, quote extensively from another printed source or that contain significant factual errors will not be published.

That last point is a particular challenge in heated election campaigns. And it’s a challenge for both letter writers and for us. The best approach is to write about why you support your candidate, rather than why you oppose the other guy (or gal). Even though we all say we dislike negative campaigning, we too often tend toward tearing down the other candidate instead of focusing on what is right about the candidate we support.

• And, in one of my favorite quotes from the late Tim Russert: “You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own facts.” So when you cite facts, we expect you to document them by citing the source — and that source has to be legitimate. Just because your neighbor’s second cousin said so, or you found it on the Web, does not necessarily make it credible.

So ... write away.

• Sarah Jenkins is editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic. If you have a question or concern, you can reach her at 577-7703; P.O. Box 9668, Yakima WA 98909; or sjenkins@yakimaherald.com. You can also comment on this column in the “Inside the Newsroom” blog, at editor.yakimablogs.com.

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