Letters to the Editor

According to Wikipedia, which we all know is a credible, academic source, letters to the editor have been around for several hundred years. When someone was annoyed with something in the community, city or country, they wrote a letter, hoping like a little child at Christmas for a special new toy, that it would be printed for all the world to see. And the "world" back then was probably a hundred people who lived all within walking distance. OK, so I have no idea how many people would read them, but it's unlikely that many considering transportation and literacy rates in the 1700s. Nonetheless, opinions were aired for public consumption, reaction, ridicule and appreciation. 


For those who could read.


For the vast majority of folks, reading was unattainable or useless. Perhaps they took their comments, questions, praises and frustrations to the town meeting? I imagine this scene playing out in my head like an episode of the Gilmore Girls: There would need to be a Loralia sneaking in food, a Luke complaining and grouchy all the time, a weird man named Kirk who did all kinds of odd jobs and someone holding the gavel behind the podium who always referenced an irrelevant rule book. Yes, I'm sure that's what it looked like. Exactly.


Fast-forward several hundred years. We live in 2010. We text, tweet and type our thoughts, questions and comments. The art of writing a letter by hand will soon be in the Smithsonian as something people did way back when. Phone calls are a chore and commonly made while on the way to someplace else or while doing something else. When there's a complaint, comment, question or praise wanting to make it's public debut, there is no formal letter composed to the institution we know as the newspaper and rarely does the whole community gather together at a town meeting on a regular basis.


Does that mean that our thoughts, questions and comments are muted? Um...not exactly.


Instead, we text, Tweet, Facebook and blog. We publish our thoughts for all the world to see on the world wide web. One click from a computer or text message from a phone and instantly and thought, question or comment is published to the masses. In some cases, it reaches more people in more places than any newspaper dreamed their circulation would or could reach. They can promote and enhance a career in minutes...or destroy a reputation in seconds. 


So I started to wonder...is writing a letter to the editor a lost art? Has the length of this section been cut? Are the letters we read the only ones even submitted? Has the demographic of the author changed from perhaps the passionate, active and involved person who is starting out or in the height of his or her career to that of the person who typically takes time for the hand-held morning paper in the year 2010?