By Andrea Milne

First, I need to make a real quick apology to the “Off the Record” fan base (all two of you). I have been off the reservation for a while, not because my love for Bi-Co blogging has diminished in the slightest, but because I’m writing a double thesis. I finally saw something on College ACB (Anonymous Confession Boards, for any non-students reading this), about a controversial article we published, that snapped me back into crazy Editor mode:

“There was nothing in that article that hasn’t been addressed on these boards. But to second what someone said a couple of posts ago, this board (for all its flaws) at least lets other people speak up and say "hey, you might feel that way, but I don’t." What’s the most anyone could do to respond to the article? A letter to the editor that may or may not be printed? It may look to you like something that’s satirical and over-generalized, but I think it makes it sound like all of us really feel that way– and you can tell by this thread that that’s not the case.”

There are so many misconceptions here I’m not sure where best to start. Let’s go in order. Not only can you write a Letter to the Editor about articles you dislike, that offended you, etc., but you can also comment on them directly on our website. You can also email the writer directly (which is why we include their email at the bottom of every article), or email the section editor (see the masthead) with your concerns. So that’s three ways to get your concerns out into the world that aren’t writing a Letter to the Editor or posting on ACB.

Secondly, we publish every Letter to the Editor we receive, provided it follows these simple guidelines:

1. The letter is kept to a maximum of 300 words (if you have more to say contact me directly and I’ll happily discuss other options with you)
2. The letter is turned in by noon on Friday for publication on Tuesday.
3. Your Letter to the Editor is signed.

If we have a concern about something you’ve written, we will contact you about it. If for some reason your letter is such that we cannot run it in its current state, we will contact you about it. We do reserve the right to edit your letter for size and clarity, but we’re not going to change your message, and we’re certainly not going to hold a letter because what you say makes us sad/angry/whatever.

Now, we recently discovered that for some reason our special email account, letters@biconews.com, is no longer forwarding mail correctly, so if you wrote a letter and didn’t see it printed in the paper, I can assure you that was not an intentional oversight on our part. While we try and sort out our email issues, feel free to email letters to me directly at amilne@brynmawr.edu, or to Sam Kaplan at smkaplan@haverford.edu.

I’m so glad that people have opinions they want to share with the rest of the community, and I hope that in the future more of those opinions will make it into our paper. 

Off the Record is meant to give you a glance into the newsroom. From policy, to ed board conversations, to the comments we get from our readers, this blog will cover it all. Questions, comments, or suggestions can be emailed to amilne@brynmawr.edu. For more Off the Record posts, click here.
 

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• Off the Record: On ACB
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• Off the Record: The “Welcome Back” Issue
• On Letters to the Editor
• Off the Record: On Anonymous Submissions
• Off the Record: On Headlines