TUESDAY, February 7, 2017, was a red letter day for The Herald. Actually, to be more precise, it was a well-read letters day.
Regular readers will no doubt have spotted that just over two weeks ago, we redesigned our two daily Letters Pages. We moved our From The Archives and On This Day features from the right-hand page to the left-hand one, where they took up the slot previously occupied by a round-up of comments from heraldscotland.com. This has allowed us to run letters all the way down to the foot of the right-hand page. It means we have been able to increase our letters space by around 700 words a day. We can now publish getting on for 18,000 of your words every week.
I should say here that my aim has been to publish not just more words, but more letters. We could have relaxed our rule that letters should be no more than 500 words, but we have chosen not to. We want to publish as many of your contributions as we can. Incidentally, those whose contributions exceed our 500-word limit should not immediately despair. I will usually write back, offering the offender the chance to chance to edit and resubmit their letter. Only this morning one such has sent in a revised effort.
I am pleased to say that in the 13 issues since this redesign we have been able to accommodate many new correspondents, from as far south as Hexham (an exception, admittedly; in Scotland, the newbie distinction lies at the moment with Galashiels) to Nairn in the north, Skye in the west and St Andrews in the east.
I have said before that I will try to give priority to new correspondents. No-one, not even our most assiduous regulars, is guaranteed publication, and none, contrary to the occasional gripes I receive, has anything like a 100 per cent record (it is a fact of human nature, of course, that people tend to complain only about the correspondents with whom they disagree).
I was asked on Monday whether we accept letters by email. To be clear, we welcome letters both by email and good old-fashioned post. It helps if they are typed, but I have become adept over the last couple of years at deciphering all kinds of handwriting. I only ask that you include a contact telephone number.
As always, readers have been discussing a wide array of topics over the past fortnight: Brexit and Scottish independence, of course, and we have had a lively response to our Great Rates Revolt series. Other regular issues to feature have included President Trump, the NHS, renewable energy and the respective states of Labour and the SNP.
On a less weighty note, we have been talking about the Queen’s Sapphire Jubilee, the art of polite interviewing, the plethora of TV travel presenters, and the wit and wisdom of Winston Churchill. We also had a flurry of correspondence on the works of the wonderfully awful poets William McGonagall and Walter McCorrisken, including this quotation from the latter: It’s hard at whiles to make words rhyme,/But I’ll bet my well-filled purse, sir/Though poets there be as good as me/There’s none that’s ony worser.
There we have it. Herald letters: home of rhyme and reason.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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