Censorious letters policy

Dear Editor: So I wonder if the Daily Courier is now going to fall victim to James Miller’s obsession with letter length. It’s a censorious policy that insists that if you can’t say it in 400 words, you will not be heard.

I once read that the policy was developed through reader feedback — in other words, through people who in most cases were not writers and who may have had little to say on any subject, let alone a complex one.

Any appearance of democracy-in-action is belied by the fact that no legitimate newspaper allows its readership to determine the way stories are selected or developed. Why should readers suddenly have control over the public’s voice?

Let me put that another way. What if Joe Fries were held to a 400-word limit? We would not have learned about the Penticton suicide rate being nearly triple the national average. Nor would we have had the five-part series exposing the City’s in-camera decisions. What about Andrea Peacock? We would not have learned that the future economic health of the Central Okanagan relies on an injection of working-age people.

And James Miller himself? We would not have had his editorial appealing for a solution to the political divide within the PIB. All this is proof that some subjects require more than 400 words to do them justice.

This is not to say that letter writers should be given free rein. Obviously, editorial control should be exercised in relation to conciseness, clarity, grammar, legality, personal attacks, and so on. Instead of giving editorial control to readers, James Miller should be encouraging the critical and educational functions of letters to the editor and public participation in the public affairs of the day.

Dianne Varga Penticton