To Seven Days, a Burlington Weekly:
Your readers, judging from their letters on Inside Track and on Crank Call, are politically aware and interested in issues. Political campaigns have degenerated into purchased commercials to create name recognition at the ballot box. No wonder most people, and your editorial policy, are disgusted with politicians and their news releases. Yet as a truly independent and yet widely circulated medium, you are in a position to give voice to candidates who take no money from anybody and refuse to buy name recognition and negative ads and attack ads. As just one f'rinstance, The Burlington Free Press told me a year ago they don't have the manpower to announce my candidacy. Horsefeathers. They also had no time to mention civil unions for the coverage of which The Rutland Herald received a Pulitzer. So:
(1) Please consider letters from bribe-rejecting candidates as valid political discourse, not "news releases."
(2) Other pubs like Vermont Times, to say nothing of The Burlington Free Press, are so conservative that they will filter out 100% of non-conservative views. You should start a column just for letters already rejected by conservative media. You might consider calling this proposed feature "PROSERVATIVE MAIL."