What “Code”?
In The Nation this week, David Margolick writes about two old friends who made a hobby of writing letters to the New York Times, hoping to get published. One met with repeated success, the other with consistent failure. Margolick alludes to people “who have spent lifetimes trying to break into the Times”, and equates getting a letter printed as managing to “crack the code”.
I don’t know that it’s really that big a mystery. I have written maybe six letters to the editor of the New York Times, and three of them have been published. Two have been about classical music, and another about the expanding exurbs of the Tampa Bay metropolitan area. I write letters when I am inspired by a topic. Obviously, I have eschewed inflammatory rhetoric when I have written. I know letters from crackpots don’t stand much of a chance in the Times. The Gainesville Sun, on the other hand….
Filed under: General on June 1st, 2009
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