Letters published largely reflect letters received

You must receive many more letters than you can publish. How do you decide which ones to print? I see great diversity in the letters, so I imagine that might be a criterion. Do you portion out the opinions? For example, If you receive more pro-Bush letters than anti, does your decision to print reflect that?

Just a question I’ve been puzzling over for some time and your article about the Opinion Page on September 10 reminded me of it.

Thanks for your time. -- Sandra

Opinion Editor Mike Oakland: Most people would be surprised to learn that we print about 90 percent of the letters we receive. What you see in the newspaper in terms of pro-Bush and anti-Bush letters is pretty much what we receive. I like to use the example of Initiative 695. We printed just over 100 letters on that subject before the vote - 60 percent in support and 40 percent opposed . Interestingly enough, that ended up paralleling the local vote on I-695. Most of the letters we reject are either anonymous, profane, libelous, have too many words or from out of this area. We give first priority to letter writers from this community.