Jennifer 8. Lee, Editors and Lobbyists Wage High-Tech War Over Letters nytimes.com
[ OK, one mainstream organ picked up the story. Love that 8. Editors ain't that dumb, it seems. Clip: ]
"We type phrases into Google all the time," said Susan Clotfelter, the letters editor at The Denver Post. "We hate to be fooled." The Post published at least two form letters last year: one in support of the budget proposal of President Bush and one in support of the terrorism stance of Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota.
Organized letter-writing campaigns have been around for decades. But the Internet has sped up both their scope and pace. At any time, editors are being bombarded by at least two or three campaigns covering any range of topics, among them immigration, school prayer and politics in general. The large campaigns are easier to spot because many identical letters appear at once. It is the isolated letter that editors have to keep an eye out for.
The editors issue alerts and queries on a 600-member e-mail list run by the National Conference of Editorial Writers. Last week, for example, an editor from Nebraska posted a questionable letter about the Pledge of Allegiance and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Within minutes, editors from Wisconsin, Tennessee, Illinois and Nebraska responded, saying they had received the same letter.
"It's instant communication among us," said Lynnell Burkett, the editorial page editor of The San Antonio Express-News. "It's extremely helpful, every day, several times a day."
Despite these efforts, some form letters still sneak into print. One letter praising President Bush, distributed by the Republican National Committee at the www .gopteamleader.com site, has appeared in more than 20 papers since Jan. 8, including The Boston Globe, The Cincinnati Post, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Press-Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif., and The Star Press of Muncie, Ind. The letter begins, "When it comes to the economy, President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership."
Several editors said the letter had slipped through partially because it seemed specifically tailored for letters pages. "It was timely," said J. R. Hill, an editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "It was short. We didn't need to do a lot of heavy editing. It stuck to basically one point."
"We were burned," she said. |
