Readers between the lines
During times of international crisis we hasten to the forum. Inside the Guardian, the forum is the editor's morning conference. On several days this week more than 60 journalists have attended, far more than usual. On Thursday, the first day of war, more than 70 were present by the time the conference ended. Thursday's leading article was unequivocal: "This war is wrong. It did not need to happen; it is unnecessary and was avoidable..." The tone of the paper's coverage of the war was one of the subjects discussed at the conference.
For you, the readers of the paper, the main forum is the letters page, where the issues and events of the day can be debated and commented upon. The crowd seeking to be heard here has probably never been greater. The acting letters editor suggested the days after the death of Diana as a possibly comparable period in terms of the prevalence of a single subject.
In relatively normal times the average number of you competing for a place on this platform is about 300 a day. During the past week this figure has sometimes doubled. The increase has been almost entirely due to your desire to comment on the war or the Guardian's coverage of it.
On Monday, 366 of you wrote letters broadly about the war - 295 came by email and 71 were received that day by post; on Tuesday there were 475 war letters, 402 by email and 73 by post; and on Wednesday there were 496 such letters, 445 by email and 51 by post. In all cases these figures are well in excess of the normal daily average for letters to the editor on all subjects.
The acting letters editor says it has been his strong impression that the letters are overwhelmingly against the war. So much so that in scanning his daily intake he has been marking any pro-war letters to return to for later consideration. In fact, an analysis of 100 of Wednesday's war letters showed 87 against the war and 13 in support. By noon on Thursday the pro-war correspondence had dropped further.
The letters editor has the difficult task of selecting and editing from this huge correspondence the 20-something letters that will get on to the page. He comes under a great deal of scrutiny. A reader asks: "Just once, for one day only, why not publish all the letters received instead of just a selection? Then we may say we know where the true balance of opinion lies."
I said in an earlier column (June 23, 2001) that nothing would boost the letters editor more in your esteem than posting a full day's correspondence on the website. It is impracticable, however, mainly for legal reasons. All the letters that are published in the paper pass beneath the gaze of a lawyer; both the writer and the paper are thus protected. It would be extremely difficult to do that for 300 letters, let alone 600, although the idea has not been entirely discounted.
All the letters that are published in the paper are put up on the website. From time to time an additional tranche is offered, selected from the big majority of letters that failed to get into the paper.
That has been done recently on a number of occasions, for example to accommodate letters responding to a column by David Aaronovitch commenting on the anti-war march, "Dear marcher, please answer a few questions." He asked: "What are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be - that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?" ("Hope against hope" was the headline on the leader that I quoted at the beginning of this column, followed by a subheading, "Pray that the war is quick and clean.")
We extended the letters on to the website again when an interview with Tony Blair by Jackie Ashley drew a big response.
The number of you turning to the website has surged strongly. Before the attack on the twin towers the number of page impressions was running at about 1m a day. After September 11 it leapt to 2.7m a day. In the past week it has been on average 4.5m a day and as I write had peaked just below 5m.
Ensuring the free and fair play of opinion in such a crisis, which means among other things giving expression to views that conflict with the paper's own line, is the letters editor's daily challenge. Complaints about the way he does it are occasionally made to me and, of course, considered, but it is important to appreciate the pressures that are brought to bear on our main meeting place. We suppose it to be a forum for civilised exchange where anyone may speak.
For you, the readers of the paper, the main forum is the letters page, where the issues and events of the day can be debated and commented upon. The crowd seeking to be heard here has probably never been greater. The acting letters editor suggested the days after the death of Diana as a possibly comparable period in terms of the prevalence of a single subject.
In relatively normal times the average number of you competing for a place on this platform is about 300 a day. During the past week this figure has sometimes doubled. The increase has been almost entirely due to your desire to comment on the war or the Guardian's coverage of it.
On Monday, 366 of you wrote letters broadly about the war - 295 came by email and 71 were received that day by post; on Tuesday there were 475 war letters, 402 by email and 73 by post; and on Wednesday there were 496 such letters, 445 by email and 51 by post. In all cases these figures are well in excess of the normal daily average for letters to the editor on all subjects.
The acting letters editor says it has been his strong impression that the letters are overwhelmingly against the war. So much so that in scanning his daily intake he has been marking any pro-war letters to return to for later consideration. In fact, an analysis of 100 of Wednesday's war letters showed 87 against the war and 13 in support. By noon on Thursday the pro-war correspondence had dropped further.
The letters editor has the difficult task of selecting and editing from this huge correspondence the 20-something letters that will get on to the page. He comes under a great deal of scrutiny. A reader asks: "Just once, for one day only, why not publish all the letters received instead of just a selection? Then we may say we know where the true balance of opinion lies."
I said in an earlier column (June 23, 2001) that nothing would boost the letters editor more in your esteem than posting a full day's correspondence on the website. It is impracticable, however, mainly for legal reasons. All the letters that are published in the paper pass beneath the gaze of a lawyer; both the writer and the paper are thus protected. It would be extremely difficult to do that for 300 letters, let alone 600, although the idea has not been entirely discounted.
All the letters that are published in the paper are put up on the website. From time to time an additional tranche is offered, selected from the big majority of letters that failed to get into the paper.
That has been done recently on a number of occasions, for example to accommodate letters responding to a column by David Aaronovitch commenting on the anti-war march, "Dear marcher, please answer a few questions." He asked: "What are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be - that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?" ("Hope against hope" was the headline on the leader that I quoted at the beginning of this column, followed by a subheading, "Pray that the war is quick and clean.")
We extended the letters on to the website again when an interview with Tony Blair by Jackie Ashley drew a big response.
The number of you turning to the website has surged strongly. Before the attack on the twin towers the number of page impressions was running at about 1m a day. After September 11 it leapt to 2.7m a day. In the past week it has been on average 4.5m a day and as I write had peaked just below 5m.
Ensuring the free and fair play of opinion in such a crisis, which means among other things giving expression to views that conflict with the paper's own line, is the letters editor's daily challenge. Complaints about the way he does it are occasionally made to me and, of course, considered, but it is important to appreciate the pressures that are brought to bear on our main meeting place. We suppose it to be a forum for civilised exchange where anyone may speak.
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