One of the most rewarding
things about working for a newspaper, I think, is the chance to see
so many people reading your work. It's very gratifying to notice
another student in your class checking out an article you wrote. By
running letters to the editor in our Opinions section, we try to
give our readers a taste of that feeling, so it's understandable
when people become miffed after we choose to run other letters
instead of theirs.
What you may not know,
however, is that the Alligator's editorial staff (composed of
editors, writers, photographers and our online team) does not
generally get a say in how much space is allotted to letters.
Believe me, if we had the space, we'd run almost every letter we
receive. Unfortunately, that's just not how things work. Because
the size of each day's paper depends largely on how many ads we
have, it's the Alligator's advertising department that decides how
much room each section will get.
Just because we don't run
your letter doesn't mean we've rejected it for some reason. More
often than not, it simply means we didn't have room for it on that
particular day. Sometimes, we'll run letters several days after
receiving them, so keep picking up the paper to check if your piece
has made it into print.
If your letter does run,
don't get offended if we make some minor edits. We clean up
everything for grammar and style, and we may also need to tweak
your letter a bit in order to ensure it's not libelous. We can't
publish something containing blatant lies that could potentially
damage someone else's reputation. Even though it's your writing,
the Alligator can still be held liable for it.
So, keep those letters
coming, and don't get discouraged if we make a few minor changes to
your writing. Trust me
"font-size: 12pt; font-family:">- we do
it to almost everyone's.
