Of letters, sausages and a bounty of fish

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2024 (440 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s talk sausages. And fish. And letters.

We get letters. Lots of letters to the editor, some of which we can print, some we can’t.

But first, sausages.

Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian politician, is credited with the saying, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” Most agree there’s no evidence he said it, but the concept is apt: many consumers just don’t want to see all of the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into something as simple as a sausage.

This is going to be a little insight into how the letters portion of the editorial page is made — and, like sausages, it may be more information than you care for.

Earlier this week, we received a letter that asked the question, “Why are some letters to the editor so lengthy, and take up so much space? A letter in today’s paper (July 16th) re: “A look at the Future’ from Yog Rahi Gupta goes on forever. Could the letter not have been condensed, or maybe it was, but really, three columns dedicated to one concern?”

Rather than answer that question with a short editor’s note, we thought we’d address the issue more fully.

Hold that thought for a second, while we talk about fish.

It’s not unusual to go down to a wharf in New England and ask fishers if you can get some tasty scrod.

The results will be fresh and interesting, except for one thing.

Scrod is not actually a fish.

It’s a fish concept.

Scrod can be cod, haddock, halibut or pollock — all tasty enough, but all with different attributes. In fact, scrod is an acronym for Select Catch Received on the Day. (Some argue that if your scrod actually happens to be freshly landed halibut, it will be called schrod. But we digress.)

The page that contains letters to the editor suffers from a particular weakness, in that the letters are printed as we get them: if we get plenty of short snappy letters on a day, we can print many. If we don’t have fresh ones, we can’t.

They are the scrod of newspaper content: different points of view, different directions, different arguments. But more than anything else, they’re fresh. And, we hope, tasty.

They relate to recent stories, commentary or other letters to the editor. We can’t control how many letters are going to swim into our real or electronic mailboxes — they are strictly the catch of the day.

Sometimes, we use longer ones than our 250-word guidelines suggest — it’s not that we’re bumping other letters out of the way to run longer ones. It’s often that we haven’t had much luck casting our nets into the sea of public opinion.

And while we’re on the topic of letters…

You may wonder why you have submitted a letter that hasn’t run, while others have. The biggest single reason, by far?

That writers assume they can use the same tone and language that they can on, say, social media. You may believe that a politician is dishonest, but if your letter says they are a thief or a pedophile, well, there have to be facts to support your conclusion — facts like, say, an actual conviction. Just because it’s the prevailing slang doesn’t mean it’s acceptable in print, for legal reasons, if for nothing else.

We also don’t like to be repetitive — if we’ve already run letters on the same topic, and with the same conclusions, as yours, it counts against the chances of yours getting in.

That being said, we like the pithy, the funny, the fresh and the artistic.

Write to us. We look forward to your screed or your scrod — or your schrod, just for the halibut.

(Sorry.)