Readers kept writing in 2008

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We love receiving letters to the editor. Why?

• They stimulate public discussion and sometimes public action about important local issues;

• They encourage debate that is a little more respectful than some of the comments on our Web site and others; and

• They show that people are reading these pages and The Bee.

In 2008, we received 6,403 letters to the editor. That number is up from 6,032 in 2007 and 6,305 in 2006. Not all of the letters met our basic guidelines. Some were not about public issues, for instance, and some were submitted anonymously. But overall, local residents had lots of ideas to share.

Of the those received, we published, in print and online, 3,310 letters — or almost 52 percent of the submissions. We hope to meet or beat that record this year.

The standard rules for submitting letters appear below, and we print them daily in the paper. If you have access to the Internet, we prefer to get letters by e-mail.

We limit people to one published letter per month, in order to provide space for as many different people as possible. I suspect that most people will only write one or two letters to a newspaper in their lifetimes. But we have a couple of dozen people who so love writing that they send us multiple letters each month. Obviously, they're well-tuned-in to current affairs and that's great. The people with lots to say also might want to go online to www.modbee.com, where they can post as many comments as they want on specific stories or letters or get into blogging.

Thank you to all who wrote in 2008; we hope to hear from you again. And if you've never written before, please try it. We welcome your views.

• • •

One of our most frequent contributors for the last few years has been Harry G. Jones. We're sorry to report that Harry died New Year's Day. He had strong conservative views and often took the media to task for what he perceived as a liberal bias. He also was, as are many of his generation, an advocate of common sense. His last letter appeared Nov. 13, under the headline "Where's outrage over reading levels?" Here's an excerpt:

"Common sense should tell every American parent that the future of this country depends on their children's respect for the law, their education and a knowledge of personal morality and social ethics. Children need a quality education to make a decent living as adults."

• • •

One of the more challenging parts of my job is determining when a letter addresses a public issue and when it really amounts to a personal testimony of faith. Generally, we say no to the latter. But when politics and religion intersect, as they have this fall with Proposition 8 and the abortion controversy, it becomes a close call. As the letters to the right of this column show, it gets interesting.

Sly is editor of the Opinions pages. Contact her at 578-2317 or jsly@modbee.com.