Twenty-six letters to the editor were published in last week’s Star, on June 13, and as of this writing we were still counting those that will be in this week’s edition; I think it will be 31.
You might not expect the person at the top of the masthead (that is, the publisher, me) to be the letters editor, but I stick with the task because they are as important as anything we publish, if not more so. I sometimes joke that The Star needs a new motto, one that would herald the serious mission we uphold in publishing letters: “Shines for All” is sweet but, well, not very enlightening.
A box at the corner of the first letters page each week says we publish every letter we receive “exclusively, with the exception of those sent anonymously, or those judged to be proselytizing, an invasion of privacy, libelous, or obscene.”
Although there are a few habitual writers, whose ideas appear week after week, for the most part the letters come from every quarter of our readership, from near and far, and they are politically and geographically diverse.
When someone expresses surprise that the letters are edited, we explain we do not change their content; opinions are what they are all about, what makes them worth reading. But imagine how messy and confusing our letters pages would be if we did not apply consistent rules of punctuation and spelling, if we did not double-check quotations from various sources, personal names, and the titles of organizations and institutions to make sure they are correct.
I wish I had a count of the most letters to have appeared in a single issue. In the back of my mind the number is 52 — probably at election time. Imagine how much staff time the editing and proofreading for such an effort takes (and, incidentally, how much the process costs)?
To all our advertisers: Please take note that the dollars you pay to be seen and read in The Star are vital to this service we provide to the community. They are not only the backbone of our budget, they contribute to a mission we consider invaluable, a mission we believe we pioneered, which spread to other publications, at least to some extent. And you have our — and our readers’ — deep thanks.