Opinion: The Letters Top Five
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During the week ending May 2, The Times received 736 usable letters, 282 of which were in our Top Five Topics. A pair of Op-Eds critical of Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office -- one written by perennial mail magnet Jonah Goldberg -- received more mail than any other subject.
- Op-Eds on the first 100 days: 87 letters, reacting, for the most part angrily, to this Op-Ed by New Republic assistant editor James Kirchick and this column by Jonah Goldberg;
- Swine flu: 61 letters, addressing the swine flu outbreak;
- Propositions 1A - 1F: 54 letters, looking ahead to the May 19 special elections;
- Torture: 53 letters, addressing continuing developments in the torture memos story; and
- EPA and greenhouse gases: 27 letters, responding to coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it will regulate greenhouse gases and to this Goldberg column suggesting that such regulation threatens American democracy.
How the Top Five is tabulated: Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.
After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, represented in the Letters Top Five tally. From these, she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper. Faxes and snail mail are not reflected in the chart.
Starting next week, the Letters Top Five will take a brief hiatus, resuming this summer.
For more on The Times’ letters process, visit our Letters FAQ.