SandBoxBlogs: Aspen Daily News "The history of LTEs"

Andrew Kole:
"Letters to the editor (LTEs) have been an important feature of American newspapers since the beginning of their publication.

A great deal of the news reports and commentaries published by early-American newspapers were delivered in the form of letters.

By the mid-18th century, LTEs were a dominant carrier of political and social discourse. Many influential essays about the role of government in matters such as personal freedoms and economic development took the form of letters, and so by the turn of the 20th century LTEs had become permanent fixtures of the opinion pages.....

.......The latter is a fairly recent development in LTE management. Prior to the Cold War, anonymous LTEs were common; the right to write anonymously was central to the free-press/free-speech movement.

By the 1970s, editors had developed strong negative attitudes toward anonymous letters, and by the end of the 20th century, about 94 percent of newspapers automatically rejected anonymous LTEs.

Some newspapers in the 1980s and ’90s created special anonymous opinion forums that allowed people to either record short verbal opinions via telephone (which were then transcribed and published) or send letters that were either unsigned or when the author used a pseudonym.

Aspen’s very own Roger Marolt used a form of pseudonym in the greatest LTE hoax Aspen has ever seen, resulting in the well received excerpt of the Aspen Times’ book “Letter’s To The Editor.”.....

......Defenders argued that anonymous forums upheld the free-press tradition of vigorous, uninhibited debate similar to that found in earlier newspapers. But again, those defenders are often a bit obscure in respect to putting even their names to this defensive position......

....Last year the Aspen Times finally stopped publishing their online hate mail forum by anonymous persons when pressure from the public hit a new high, along with the vicious content of the comments......

......As a relatively consistent writer of LTEs for the last 13 years, I say congratulations LTE writers, and to our local papers who publish them.

Write on......."  (Read more?  Read without breaks?  Click title)
"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBox Comments: Aspen Times/Letter to the Editor "Victimized because of his success"

"Obviously I am biased about the proposed project and the process by which it is being handled — Nikos Hecht is my son — but Mr. Ireland's divisiveness and disdain for working with those he clearly has a vendetta against is disheartening to say the least. Characterizing a project as “extortionist” is beyond the pale. Perhaps it might occur to the mayor that: (1) developers are not the enemy in any city, much less a tourist-oriented town, (2) it is not a sin to have worked damn hard, to have been successful and then to have chosen to put those rewards back into the city where one was raised, (3) turning local developers away (particularly extraordinarily generous developers who continually and charitably give back to locals) is a precarious, slippery slope, and (4) it should be obvious that a developer has the right to make money on his or her investment — in other words, buying a property in the city of Aspen should not be expected to be a gift to the city.

One can only hope that the waters for negotiation have not been so muddied by this kind of unseemly, nasty rhetoric that neither side benefits..."
(Brooke Newman, Aspen)

(Read the rest of this terrific letter?  Click title. Comment to discuss)

SandBox Comments: Aspen Daily News "Time to man up"

We couldn't agree more.

One of the men on Aspen City Council needs to put Mick Ireland in his place.  The next time, anytime that he pulls these rants and tantrums.  

For  the sake of the city, if nothing else.  Enough is enough.

"Editor:

Television’s “Jersey Shore” has nothing on the reality show we know as the Aspen City Council, as evidenced by Monday’s meeting.

But first I want to talk about Theatre Aspen and their naked girders. My suggestion is to team up with the Aspen Art Museum and turn the site into an outdoor winter sculpture garden, incorporating the girders as display elements. It could be fabulous.

Now back to the reality show.

While I truly appreciate that “Mick the mayor” (a great name for the lead character of our show) apologized for the length of his rant, he needed to apologize for the content. It was embarrassing.

The council looked dysfunctional and Mick reminded me of an out-of-control Rush Limbaugh. Why no one tried to cut him off baffles me.

Let’s review what happened...."
(Andrew Kole)

(Read more?  Are you sure you want to hear it?  You need to, unfortunately.  Click title.)