Hello dear readers!

I’m writing to share some thoughts on how we publish our letters to the editor, and expectations we’re putting in place.

With four more years of a contentious White House administration ahead of us, we anticipate receiving a large volume of letters. As readers know, we have a tiny staff. We strive to run as many letters as possible, especially those critical of The Beachcomber.

But fact-checking and editing letters is taxing, and we cannot permit it to take away from our ability to cover the news.

So with the goal of keeping our letters to the editor section a vibrant place for a diversity of opinions, we’re updating and clarifying our guidelines.

Style and tone

• The letters section is a place for readers to respond directly to the news and opinions shared in the newspaper — or those which the paper should be covering. It’s not a platform for personal soapboxes. If your letter isn’t addressing a topic relevant to readers or isn’t adding to the public dialogue on a topic, we may choose to not run it. Also, we typically don’t publish letters about business or neighbor disputes.

• Passion and criticism make a letter strong, but we draw the line at dehumanizing, bigoted, cruel or insulting statements.

• We edit letters for space, clarity, civility and accuracy. We aim to preserve the tone, style and intent of letters, but if you insist that its precise wording cannot be changed, we recommend that you find another outlet.

• We have a saying: “Don’t break news on the opinion page.” We will hold letters containing factual claims about a person or organization which we have not yet reported until we can confirm those claims. If your letter contains claims which are extremely difficult to confirm, we may not run it. Consider if your concerns would be better submitted as a news tip.

• Your letter should be your own original thoughts, addressed to The Beachcomber. We don’t run open letters or letters to third parties. We don’t run letters which have been published in other outlets, or which are slight rewordings of letters sent to other outlets. Some readers send us letters through political campaign websites, like newmode.org. We don’t run these letters, either, because they’re difficult to verify and are typically part of mass mailing campaigns.

• We have no obligation to print a letter you send us. No newspaper would, or could, agree in advance to print any letter it receives, nor to justify its reasoning for doing so. In the age of social media, there is no lack of venues for you to share your opinion.

Nuts and bolts

• We’ve previously had a 350 word maximum for letters, but we believe it’s time to tighten this limit to encourage a wider array of writers. Going forward, letters to the editor should be 250 words or fewer. This is still higher than the maximum for many newspapers, including The Tacoma News Tribune, The Seattle Times and The New York Times.

• The Beachcomber puts together its weekly paper on Tuesday morning. Letters should be received by the paper no later than the Friday beforehand to ensure we have time to edit them. The later you send your letter, and the more complicated it is to fact check, the more likely it is that we’ll have to hold it a week.

• Letter writers must be Vashon-Maury Island residents or otherwise have a strong connection to the island.

• Letter writers must include their full name, which is published alongside their letter. We don’t publish anonymous letters, letters under pen names, or letters written by more than one person. Letter writers must also include their phone number and address; we don’t publish that information, but we use it to confirm your identity.

• Not everyone have access to, or skill using, the internet — so we do accept handwritten letters. However, these take significantly longer to process and must be manually re-typed. So we ask that you submit your letters (and news tips, and Happenings submissions) as plain text, not PDFs, JPGs or other files.

• At most, we publish only one letter per writer per month.

• We don’t take letters down from our website after they’ve been published.

• We reserve the right to bend or break these rules in extraordinary circumstances.

Remember, the best way to send us a letter to the editor is by visiting vashonbeachcomber.com/submit-letter, or by emailing editor@vashonbeachcomber.com.

Alex Bruell is the editor of The Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber.