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In response to Williford's question, Torrey does try to run letters from opposing sides of the same topic. Yes, he does edit letters for length and to meet standards such as decency and legality. A reader got mad recently when the paper wouldn't let him, in a letter, say that a police officer should be charged with homicide. The N&O in its news stories doesn't accuse people of crimes before they've been charged, and it wouldn't do so in readers' letters, either. The paper is liable, legally, for what it prints regardless of whose pen it came from.

It's useful to state, I think, why a newspaper even has letters to the editor. The letters pages are the only place in the printed edition where you talk to us, as well as to other readers. Everywhere else in the paper, we talk to you. One-way communication is becoming increasingly anachronistic in this interactive world, and it makes The People's Forum that much more valuable a piece of real estate.

And a more exclusive club. Ten years ago, The N&O published 43 percent of the letters it received. Last year, the rate was 25 percent. Because of the growth in the number of letters submitted, it has become a venue that is increasingly difficult for readers to access -- a concern that I detect in the frustration of readers who don't make the cut. The paper doesn't, unfortunately, acknowledge the letters it receives because of the volume, and rejectees typically receive no explanation. That's not good for reader relations.

I see the letters as a valuable franchise of The News & Observer and those not printed as a wasted resource. Why throw away 10,000 reader communications a year? There's a lot of gold in those letters (there's a lot of dross, too). The N&O is limited in its amount of newspaper space to print letters, but there's no limit to the amount of Web space where letters could be published online. The N&O has an online edition, www.newsobserver.com. Why not publish the letter overwash online?

There are reasons why that would be a logistical challenge. Some letters should not be published because they are libelous, obscene or wrong on the facts. And how do you perform an Allen Torrey-style, surgical-precision edit on the volume of letter overflow?

I don't have easy answers to those challenges. But those are our problems, not the readers', and it seems to me could be overcome.

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