The letters keep coming

If you thought the Opinions pages looked different last week, you were right. Something was missing. In a sense, you were.

Our readers were busy with the holidays, and they weren’t writing letters to the editor. It happens almost every December and during the summer, when folks are on vacation.

Fortunately for us — and you — the drought is over. The e-mail and snail mail bring us your thoughts, and we put them in Readers Write.

As I’ve said before, letters are one of the best-read things in our paper. Lots of readers turn to them first, along with other items like a favorite comic or sports scores.

Readers like letters because they come from people like them, not journalists. They are often about local issues, not something terrible on the other side of the world. They are mostly written in plain English. They are the unfiltered thoughts of their neighbors, not the carefully chosen words of a politician.

The Enterprise runs every letter we get with only a few minor restrictions — one every 30 days, no personal stuff, etc. Also, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. We have to be careful not to perpetuate hearsay or Internet rumors.

Otherwise, if we get it one day, you read it on another. You can write any time, but your letter will stand out more when we aren’t getting a lot. You can e-mail letters to ttaschinger@hearstnp.com or mail them to Readers Write, P.O. Box 3071, Beaumont, Texas, 77704.

How about it, readers? Want to reach thousands of people with a few strokes of the pen or keyboard? That section of the paper is waiting for you like a blank canvas. Put something memorable there.