letters to editors

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

Another thing to keep in mind.  They are not going to relinquish 
a large number of column inches to a letter responding to an article 
or op-ed, so you have to keep the letter short and pointed.  This 
usually means that you will be unable to respond to all of the
errors/inaccuracies in a story.  This type of response is usually
hard for people in scientific fields since they will want to lay 
out careful arguements responding to all the errors.  But, those 
careful letters won't be published.

Michael Baker


>
>Several excellent letters were sent to the Los Angeles Times concerning the
>November 30 "Column Left" by Helen Caldicott. However, they were not
>published primarily because they were not received in a timely fashion. My
>experience with the press is that they have a very, very short attention
>span. If we want to be effective in responding to these media issues we
>have to do so within 48 hours of the original published article to which we
>are responding.
>

	
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Michael C. Baker, Ph.D.		Safeguards Science and Technology
Postdoctoral Research Associate	P.O. Box 1663, Mail Stop E540
Phone: (505) 667-7334		Los Alamos National Laboratory
Fax:   (505) 665-4433		Los Alamos, NM 87545
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