Thinking Too Much: First Letter to the Editors
by David Rodeback
Saturday, March 27, 2010
We had our first letter to the editors today, via e-mail. The fact of it more than the content poses an interesting question we hadn't thought to answer yet, but let's consider the content first, anyway.
A reader e-mailed to say she enjoyed this week's issue of the American Fork Weekly Gazette, and that two articles in particular made her laugh. She said we should write for Eddie Murphy. We're a very serious publication, and, even if we weren't, I don't think Eddie Murphy would be my first choice of comedian -- I'll have to ask the other half of the Editorial Board if he prefers Murphy -- but we appreciate the compliment.
One of the articles was intentionally a little playful, though also intended to be informative. It seemed that it might be better to demonstrate American Fork City's online, searchable Municipal Code, insofar as possible in print, than just to mention that it's now available and throw in a link. This led to an exploration of the possible delinquency of a fictional canine named Rover. Someone laughed? Yeah, we deserve that. We even like that.
The other article was trying to be serious, but the aforementioned reader managed to laugh at it anyway. This was the article about the breakfast workshop on business writing. What tickled was the juxtaposition near the end of tight City budgets and American Fork Mayor James H. Hadfield's work in the kitchen at the event. I wonder, if the writer or the editor had noticed that the juxtaposition might tickle a little, would we have acted to eliminate the possibility of slight mirth in a relatively serious story? Maybe not; it's not as if it were a story about something really grim, like a plane crash or a massive earthquake. A little mirth might be okay.
Such is the life of writers and editors, for whom every sentence, every phrase, every word is somehow a decision or three or ten.
That's already more attention than people laughing at our articles deserves, at least this week. The point here is actually the larger question: Do we publish letters to the editor or not? I've been to all the Editorial Board meetings (two), and I'm pretty sure we never discussed it. I guess we will now.
If such letters suddenly start appearing, I guess you'll know (a) we decided that we publish them, and (b) people are actually writing them.
. . . Unless we want to make them up and then publish them. No, no, we're the wrong sort of publication for that. (I suspect a much older e-mail publication, the Dilbert Newsletter, of doing that. And does The Onion have letters? Please note, the American Fork Weekly Gazette may be a publication for the whole family, written by people who could write for a superstar comedian if they weren't so clean-cut and serious about the news, but The Onion, for all its virtues, isn't quite a family publication. Fair warning, you know?)
So . . . letters to the editor. I guess you could write one and see if we publish it. There's a link over yonder for e-mailing the Editorial Board.
