Poughkeepsie Journal Letters Policy Watch

The following information was gleaned by examining the letters published in the Poughkeepsie Journal for a period starting Sep. 10, 2003. I will update it periodically as more information becomes available.

The Journal's stated policy on letters can be found here. Until I brought this information to the editor's attention, it said, in part, “Letters of more than 250 words will not be considered. Because of the volume of letters, writers will be limited to having one letter published every 30 days.” Recently, it was changed to, “Letters should be no more than 250 words. Because of the volume of letters, writers should submit no more than one letter every 30 days.”

I had the old “policy” quoted to me on several occasions, but noticed it being violated on a fairly regular basis. Because it was applied on my letters, but apparently not on other peoples', I undertook a project to collect data from the letters and through the magic of computing, was able to accomplish it with minimal work on my part.

Under the old policy, they would hold letters for weeks before publishing them, and then apply the thirty day limit based on the date they published it, not on the date it was submitted. I expect the old criteria will be applied to ‘conservative’ letters, but they will use the looser wording of the policy to justify more frequent publishing of ‘liberal’ letters. In any event, the new policy is clearly intended to make it more difficult to to hold them accountable.

What I really need is information from conservative letter-writers, including how long it took to get in the paper, how much editing was done to it, and any distortion or bias in the headline. If you submit a letter to the Journal, please send me an email and include that information.

What follows is data on the two criteria stated in the “policy.”

(Updated 1/6/04)