Letter to the editor

Today, for the second time in my life, one of my many letters to the editor of the New York Times actually appeared in print. (No link. The letter is political; this blog is not.) I'm blogging -- not to say bragging -- about this in connection with a recent New Yorker article about a group of teenagers who managed to place seventeen letters to the editor of the Times within the space of a month.

Were these kids talented? Lucky? Just gaming the system? You be the judge.

All the letter writers were students in Duke University's Talent Identification Program, or TIP, a summer program for gifted high school students. And all were members of Mark Duckenfield's international relations classes.

Duckenfield, who has taught similar classes over the past several years, gave his students his usual assignment to write to the Times as a means of helping them "feel engaged with the stories." This year was the first time any of his students made the editorial page, beating formidable odds. The Times editorial page receives about a thousand letters a day and publishes around twenty. On August 1, four of five published letters on "the differences between American and European attitudes toward work" were the work of Duckenfield's students -- including one who claimed to be a mother writing from London.

Following their professor's advice, the students produced letters that were passionate, frank, and written in a "common voice" that nonetheless conveyed intelligence. They also listed their home addresses instead of their summer location. According to the New Yorker, this advice stemmed from Duckenfield's concern that if the letters had "all come from Durham, North Carolina, they probably wouldn't have been accepted." The Associated Press, on the other hand, reported that Duckenfield "didn't want students to pretend to be from Durham, so he told them to use their hometowns."

Some of the students found seeing their letters in print such a heady experience that they were determined to repeat it. Two students managed that feat by using pseudonyms for their second letters.

According to the Duke Chronicle, a university vice president "alterted the Times to Duckenfield's efforts" before the media picked up the story. Not surprisingly, Times letters editor Thomas Feyer was not amused.

For starters, the letters column doesn't cooperate with classroom assignments as a matter of policy. What's more, said Feyer, although the letters demonstrated "good writing and smart thinking," the "subterfuge" inherent in the assignment has the effect of "depriving someone else of a chance to get into the paper. Particularly in light of the recent journalistic scandals involving plagiarism (Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass) and forged documents (CBS and the Bush Air National Guard records), Feyer considers this episode a betrayal of the Times's reliance on the "good faith of [its] letter writers."

From Duckenfield's perspective (and my own), the no-classroom-assignments rule is "pretty tacky." Besides, he told the New Yorker, "The students' opinions are just as good as anyone else's, and evidently, in a random selection, they're better than ninety-eight per cent of the opinions they get." The Chronicle notes disapprovingly that "instead of acknowledging Duke's role" in bringing the story to the Times's attention, Feyer chastised the university for its "lack of any kind of ethics or remorse."

Though I don't blame Duke for the outcome or Duckenfield for the basic assignment, I can't condone the use of pen names or false identities. Smart, sprightly letters are a pleasure to read whatever their source, and publication shouldn't be akin to winning the lottery. Moreover, student writers should be encouraged, not ignored.

From the perspective of digital culture, however, what interests me is the Internet's role in this story. Like polls and cell phones, this may be another case where policy and practice have not caught up with technology. Not long ago, the postmarks on their letters would have betrayed the students' summer locale. I also suspect that the casual assumption of a false name or identity seems less consequential online than it would if the writer actually had to put pen to paper.

After all, cyber-identities are more fluid. Experimentation, fun, anonymity, and protest against the system are common rationales for pretending to be someone you're not in the illusory privacy of your online universe. Feyer told the Associated Press that the Times has "tightened [its] safeguards" in the wake of the Duke incident, but in truth, at the current level of technological sophistication, the Times can't do much more than ask letter writers a few extra questions if it wants to publish reader responses in timely fashion.

(Perhaps this explains a question that preceded publication of my own letter: "Did you write the letter from New York?" At first, I found the question strange. In this context, I find it strangely amusing.)

How do you feel about the teenage letter-writers? Was the assignment inappropriate? Did the students who used their own names and hometowns behave unethically? Did the professor? What purpose is served by limiting whose letters are published, and how often, in our nation's de facto newspaper of record?

Let me know what you think.