Before there was social media, there were letters to the editor.
The newspaper in the town I grew up in was a weekly called “The Lander Journal.” I remember it being fairly thick as far as small town newspapers go — perhaps, 15 to 20 pages — and I used to read every issue front to back.
My favorite part of the paper was the Letters to the Editor. There would be at least a dozen in every paper.
People shared their opinion about everything in the Letters to the Editor, even some things the paper didn’t write about.
Nearly anything that was thought provoking warranted a letter in the Lander Journal. It didn’t matter if it was a particularly pretty sunset someone had seen as they were coming off the mountain or the monster trout that got away, people wrote a letter to talk about it.
When a well-known community member died, the newspaper would be flooded with letters from people with personal stories about them.
Facebook ruined the opinion page
Facebook came along, and it took awhile, but eventually, the letters stopped coming because people realized they could instantly post their opinion.
We are able to give our opinion so fast now, that I think sometimes we forget how to stop and think about what we are writing and who our audience is.
We forget we are talking to our neighbors. We forget we are talking to our child’s kindergarten teacher. We forget we are talking to children who, like I did when I was young, sometimes read what we write.
The thing is, putting pen to paper may seem inconvenient, but it forces you to slow down and think about what you want to say. While you’re writing, you’re thinking about who is going to read it, how they are going to interpret it and whether it’s even worth saying.
Yes. It’s faster to type a response to a story out and click the arrow to submit it, but I think something gets lost in the translation. I think people are quicker to judge based on feelings rather than logic (I’ve been guilty of this more times than I care to admit) and they don’t think about the consequences of their words.
I’m not saying a person can’t have an opinion and share in a post or comment on Facebook, but I do think they need to take the time to think about what they’re saying before it’s put out there for the universe to see because regardless of your privacy settings, every word you type is out there somewhere. Even if you edit your comment, the original is still there — you can see for yourself by checking the edit history on your posts.
Will Letters to the Editor ever come back?
As I’m writing this, I’m envisioning a unit in a grade school or middle school writing class that requires the students to write a letter to the editor based on something they read in the paper. It would teach them critical thinking and letter writing etiquette. They could work on improving their handwriting and grammar skills. They could learn that their opinions matter, regardless of their age.
I would like to say we can bring back the art of writing a letter to the editor, but I’m uncertain. Sad to say, but in this age of instant gratification, 15-second sound bites and limited attention spans, I think the time of the letter to the editor has come to an end.
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Contact the writer:
Twitter: @denise_CNA
Email: dcaskey@crestonnews.com