Another letter "published"

Last week I was listening to WBUR's Only A Game, which contained a story about FIFA president Sebb Blatter. I later commented about it on their Facebook page (post February 19 at 7:49pm), and in this week's show they read my comments in their letters segment.
I've sounded smarter.

(insert clever Twitter pun)

This Twitter assignment has been a lot of fun. Until now, I have been using Twitter to lurk. I follow sports and music people and organizations I'm interested in. The star seeker in my likes that they are more accessible on Twitter than through other means. I also follow some organizations to get information for news, product info and work. I also follow some strictly for fun (Denis Leary, Weird Al, Sarah Silverman).

...and this is Fresh Air

The one thing that stood out most for me listening to the interview with Biz Stone was how quickly and how totally Twitter changed. When they started it was seen as the height of frivolousness. He and the other founders were ridiculed by their friends, who told them Twitter was useless (I liked his statement "so is ice cream"), that it was like Seinfield--about nothing. Which was fine with him, they were having fun.

Three years after it just started being widely used, Twitter is now a method of communication of great importance. Twitter was instrumental in the Egyptian people bringing down Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest running (since 1981) dictators in the region.
Twitter has been contacted by the United States State Department to postpone scheduled maintenance, to make sure protesters in Iran could communicate with each other.

This is a good example of how quickly technology in general, and specifically communication technology is changing. Twitter didn't exist in public use in 2006, and now it is changing the political landscape of the middle east, thereby completely changing the lives of millions of people. Like all mass communication, it can also be used in important, but negative ways. Like all tools, it is up to the users to choose to make positive changes.

wading into comments

Well, not much success with my first concerted effort at posting comments on online stories.  I commented on three stories. The first was on Yahoo about the Tennessee women’s basketball team beating Vanderbilt. I wrote:

"Funny that Coach Balcomb beat Tennessee when she was coach of Xavier in the tournament, 

but has never beat them since becoming coach of Vandy."

This was my most successful comment of the three, which leads me to the only valuable piece of advice I have to offer from this exercise: If you post incorrect comments, people will respond:

me and my big mouth

Next time I write a letter to the editor, it's gonna be about helping old ladies across the street or something.
Either a topic that is easy to do, or hard to check if I did it or not.

So today I went out to clear the storm drain in the street across from my house. Turned out the snow bank was up to my ribs.
 










  
A couple of hours later, I found it.


Luckily, there was a reward:

Update: with the thawing and the rain, I'm glad I did it.

A river runs through it

I'm famous!

I never was contacted by the Recorder. They don't have the letters or Op Ed sections available on line (hence the scan above), so I've been trying to remember to check the paper. On my way home from getting eggs I stopped and bought today's (2/12) edition and found my letter. 75 cents well spent.

The good news: I get the 10 points.

The bad news: I now have to shovel out the storm drain across from my driveway before all my neighbors read the letter.

My Globe letter hasn't showed up yet, which means it won't be published. The world has moved on from the DOT's study of Toyota.

The closest thing to a response I got was this:

letters@globe.com

show details Feb 9 (7 days ago)

Thank you for your submission to the Globe's letters page. Because of the

volume of letters we receive, we cannot print all the letters we would like

to. In the event that we are unable to publish your letter, we hope that you

will write to us another time.

The Boston Globe

However, I did find Ben's letter while I was looking at the Globe letters page. Nice work!

Letters to the Editor (mine)

I made sure both letters I wrote were brief (under 150 words), as that seemed an important factor to getting them published.

The first letter I wrote was to the Greenfield Recorder. I picked it because I live in Greenfield, and it is more likely to run the letter because it is a small paper. I picked the topic of snow removal because it is much on everyone's mind and therefore has relevance for the whole community. Also because today's paper had a front page article about Greenfield going over its snow budget. I decided on a call to community service because that seems like the kind of letter that is highly likely to be published. I added the sentence about most towns being in a similar situation because I remembered that the The Recorder is read by people all over Franklin County. Here is the letter:

Funny still choice

On Boston.com, they have slideshow of Superbowl pictures. One of them is a screenshot from the video of Christina Aguilera's butchering of the National Anthem. They didn't pick a very flattering image among the 2000+ frames from the video.

Wahl-Jorgensen assignment 2

My reaction to the quote from Wahl-Jorgensen:

"Editors see a policy of limited editorial intervention as the only way to ensure an open and honest debate about the varied issues that face citizens of a multicultural society. They are also eager to show that ethical aims of fairness, accuracy and balance underpin the letters pages."

I think this is a fairly accurate description of how editors view their role. From her descriptions in the book (and I don't really have any other experience to go on here) letters page editors seem committed to maintaining that part of the paper as the one of last vestiges of open debate, and to fairly represent the opinions of their readers.

Letters to the Globe

The first letter to the editor that grabbed my attention in today's Globe was one titled:
Archdiocese unwavering in its commitment to aid survivors of abuse  
I was immediately intrigued because I thought, "I've never heard that before". Definitely a "man-bites-dog" story.