Dear Editor...

Is Writing Letters to the Editor Worth It?

I think it is.

Repetition. The power of repetition. The more you say something, the more people tend to believe it. Trump is a master of this. So was Hitler. The Big Lie: the election was stolen—it’s hammered home, by repetition, again and again, and again. Seeing something in print makes it even more believable. Till finally even reasonable people start to say, well, maybe, what if it’s true after all…

If it can work for evil, it can also work for good. The more we tell the truth, write it down, say it out loud, name names and call out lies, the more the truth will stick.

Yeah, but who reads newspapers anymore?

Well, my teeny hometown paper has an average weekday circulation of 49,890. Even if only 1% of them read my letter, that’s quite a few people. Certainly more people than I can reach face to face.

Yeah, but who bothers to read the Letters to the Editor? A few people do, and age-wise, newspaper readers (as opposed to those who read the news on their phones or listen to podcasts) tend to be older. So I will bear this fact in mind when writing my letter. Statistically speaking, older voters tend to skew more Republican, more conservative. So I don’t think I’ll write a letter to the editor about the virtues of early voting—the last thing I want to do is get more MAGA voters to the polls. Instead, I’ll point out how dangerous Trump’s comments on NATO are. Or remind voters that he was found guilty of sexual assault.

Or maybe I’ll be more positive and write about how Biden’s economic policies are benefitting all of us, or praise his work lowering prescription drug prices. The people who might read my letter are the very people I want to convince—conservative voters who might be undecided. They’re the ones who could swing the election.

When writing to a local paper, focusing on local issues increases your chances of getting the letter published. Again, think about issues that will resonate with older, conservative, undecided voters. Prescription drug prices (where the Biden administration has done some amazing work) is a winner. Lowering health care costs. Preserving open space. Amplify the good work that Democrats are doing.

I won’t deny that writing a letter to the editor is time-consuming. You have to google around to find what format your local paper wants for letters, what the word count is, etc. Then you have to craft a pithy letter, not too long, bolstered with facts you’ve researched. A bit like writing a term paper. It’s a dull task, for no reward. You write your letter (via e-mail, most newspapers don’t read snail mail letters anymore) and hit send, and off it goes. And maybe it gets printed, maybe it doesn’t.

Will it make a difference? Will your ideas lodge in anyone’s mind, change anyone’s heart, affect anyone’s vote? You’ll never know.

But then Vincent van Gogh never knew how his paintings affected anyone. A lot of hard work, for no reward. But fortunately for us, he did them anyway

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