Keep Those Letters Coming
It may come as a shock to members of Gen Z, but there was once a way to communicate with others before the days of social media.
Over the past few weeks, the Saratoga Sun’s opinion page gave a preview of how that once looked as we received at least one Letter to the Editor a week since the end of August. I was absolutely delighted to see a letter come through the mail or email because it showed that people were invested in their community. Letters on the topic of “Where the Trout Leap in Main Street” to pickleball courts to the North Platte Valley Medical Center all graced page A4 of your community newspaper.
That being said, there were other issues which I had thought would have elicited Letters to the Editor but which never arrived.
The United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management often seem to get a bad wrap in these parts and so I assumed our multi-part series on the Sierra Madre fire prevention meeting and the Landscape Vegetation Analysis (LaVA) project would have made some people put pen to paper. If that wasn’t it, then I thought for certain there would be some opinions over the discussion held by the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees on a concealed carry policy for district employees.
Neither subject, however, resulted in any correspondence to the newspaper to be published. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Disappointed, but not surprised.
Social media has given everyone the power of the keyboard and technology has given everyone a video camera to express their opinions. In some ways, the internet and technology have become the great equalizers in that every opinion carries the same weight and is treated as fact. The algorithm of social media and the financial incentive for these platforms to keep its users hooked means users will see more and more posts which confirm their biases and fit within their own echo chamber. It also means people become more polarized. A scroll through the comments section of nearly any social media post will reveal polarized, partisan bickering which further devolves into name calling and the citing of misinformation or disinformation.
It’s easy.
It’s so incredibly easy to fire off a comment on social media in a few seconds without the thought of who it's aimed at or what the result may be. By comparison, writing a Letter to the Editor takes time and requires one to carefully consider their talking points. It is reminiscent of a debate, or at least how debates used to be when both sides displayed some sense of decency and decorum and stuck to the points rather than resorting to ad hominem attacks.
I hope someone proves me wrong. I hope when I check the mail for the Saratoga Sun there will be Letters to the Editor waiting to be read and published. If it’s something you truly care about, then it’s something worth a letter.