As per usual, I got an auto-reply from The Globe, telling me they would review my letter. In this case I responded to the auto-reply and asked an ethical question—how long should I give The Globe to publish my letter before I was free to put the topic up on my blog.
Matt Bernstein, the Letters Editor, wrote back to me promptly and here is what he said:
That's a good question, and I'm glad you asked. I usually leave a 10-day window between publication of a story or opinion piece and publication of a letter in reaction to it. If, after 10 days, you haven't heard anything, it's safe to assume a letter won't be published. Also, I try to leave at least three months between publications of letters by the same writer, and since you just had a letter run July 1, I'm going to pass on this latest one. So, by all means, feel free to post it to your blog.This is useful information for all of us.♠ Note also that Mr Bernstein knew that he had published a letter of mine a little over a month ago. I don't believe it is because I am a famous personality in the Boston Area. I think that the Letter's section, which has its own Editor, is looked after carefully.
Thanks for your continued interest.
I am pretty confident that polite letters to editors do get published (I am a Lowell "Blow In" but have several letters published in The Boston Globe and quite a few in The Lowell Sun. Letters to the Editor are like comments to blog posts. In the case of comments to blog posts, at least this blog, if they are not defamatory or written with a lot of bad language, they are going to stay up, even if you think I am dead wrong or stupid and say so. But, violate the rules and it will come down. As an FYI, all comments are copied to two of my EMail accounts, so even if it is a comment on an old blog post, I will still see it. Time consuming, but responsible.
In another post I will talk about the letter itself.
Regards — Cliff
♠ And, I will be cross-posting this to the LRCC Web Site.
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