Opinion: The Letters Top Five

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Once again last week, Proposition 8 generated more mail to the Los Angeles Times letters page--way more mail--than any other topic in the news.

Readers responded especially strongly to this Op-Ed by Jasmyne Cannick. Cannick argued that blacks--gay or straight--shouldn’t be expected to care about, much less join, the fight against the gay marriage ban. The vast majority of the 216 letter writers who commented on her piece strongly disagreed.

Last week The Times received 1281 usable letters, 1090 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

• Proposition 8: 665 letters;
• Barack Obama: 269 letters, including 54 letters reacting to this Op-Ed by Shelby Steele, and comments on other post-election coverage, too;
• California budget: 60 letters, lamenting the state’s sorry fiscal situation;
• Bailing out Detroit: 59 letters, responding to this editorial and this Op-Ed about plans to help out the Big Three U.S. automakers; and
• Bailing out the banks: 37 letters, reacting to various aspects of the federal government’s financial rescue plan.

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--more on that later--and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, which are represented in the Letters Top Five tally. From these, she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.