Letters pages flourish despite online interactivtiy
Posted by Carolyn Lo on March 31, 2008 at 10:18 AM
Because of the Internet, the "Letters to the Editor" page is no longer the only means of communication between the reader and the newspaper. However, the letters pages seem to be surprisingly flourishing on broadsheets.
"I expected the online comment facility to have had much more of an effect on the printed page than it did," says Times's Letters Editor Ian Brunskill.
Brunskill receives around 500 letters, faxes and emails a day, which is a large increase from pre-Internet times. The Telegraph receives around 700, the Guardian 300, and the Independent about 200.
Journalists appear to have a renewed respect for the "old-fashioned skill of careful editing," according to Guardian journalist Iain Hollingshead. The online comments can be interesting, but also abusive and fatuous.
"What's needed is an editor to filter out the nonsense and put the exchanges together with a bit of shape. I believe that's called a letters page," says the Times columnist Matthew Parris.
The letters pages has retains some abilities that may not yet be evident online:
- It sets a newspaper's identity since letters are hand picked to appear in print. Some newspapers are urban, some are rural, and some begin each letter with "Sir."
- It sets the news agenda. For example, the Times opened its report on the embryo bill by offering an "open-minded discussion between Catholic church leaders and the research community" on its letters page.
- It provides a change of subject and tone from the hard news.
Letters pages, however, haven't adapted to the Internet. Some are difficult to find online and are poorly laid out, while others are not consistently updated. Newspapers need to find a way to consolidate the best reader responses and commentary in a "single, readable forum, both online and in print," writes Hollingshead, though it is "expensively time-consuming."
Nigel Willmott, the Guardian's Letters Editor, says, "Online services, who thought they could do without editors, are now seeing their merits again. Our job on the letters pages is to do the work for our busy readers."
Source: Guardian.co.uk
"I expected the online comment facility to have had much more of an effect on the printed page than it did," says Times's Letters Editor Ian Brunskill.
Brunskill receives around 500 letters, faxes and emails a day, which is a large increase from pre-Internet times. The Telegraph receives around 700, the Guardian 300, and the Independent about 200.
Journalists appear to have a renewed respect for the "old-fashioned skill of careful editing," according to Guardian journalist Iain Hollingshead. The online comments can be interesting, but also abusive and fatuous.
"What's needed is an editor to filter out the nonsense and put the exchanges together with a bit of shape. I believe that's called a letters page," says the Times columnist Matthew Parris.
The letters pages has retains some abilities that may not yet be evident online:
- It sets a newspaper's identity since letters are hand picked to appear in print. Some newspapers are urban, some are rural, and some begin each letter with "Sir."
- It sets the news agenda. For example, the Times opened its report on the embryo bill by offering an "open-minded discussion between Catholic church leaders and the research community" on its letters page.
- It provides a change of subject and tone from the hard news.
Letters pages, however, haven't adapted to the Internet. Some are difficult to find online and are poorly laid out, while others are not consistently updated. Newspapers need to find a way to consolidate the best reader responses and commentary in a "single, readable forum, both online and in print," writes Hollingshead, though it is "expensively time-consuming."
Nigel Willmott, the Guardian's Letters Editor, says, "Online services, who thought they could do without editors, are now seeing their merits again. Our job on the letters pages is to do the work for our busy readers."
Source: Guardian.co.uk
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