I frequently gripe here about all the form letters and letter-writing campaigns that clog up our letters e-mailbox. Today, I’ll demonstrate step-by-step how this works, and hopefully show why it’s such a nuisance (and why such letters are generally ignored by editors).

This morning in the e-mailbox, I discovered 30 or so letters, nearly all from outside The Journal News readership area, regarding Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier being held captive by Hamas. These letters are being generated by visitors to the Web site of The Israel Project, a Washington, D.C. – based think tank. It’s a fairly easy process: From the homepage, go to “Take Action” and click “Send a letter to your editor” in the drop-down menu. There you will find a list of recent form letters ready to send (the Gilad Shalit one is the third one down). When you click on “Gilad Shalit – Three Years in Captivity,” you will then be asked to provide your ZIP code. Whether you enter a ZIP code from White Plains, Brooklyn or elsewhere in the tri-state area, the site will provide you with a list of 78 newspapers, including Spanish-language papers, stretching from central Connecticut up to Kingston, NY, and down through most of New Jersey. It is then up to the writer to choose which of these to submit his/her letter to. Problem is, all of them are “pre-checked,” so if the writer does nothing, the letter will go to all 78 newspapers! The writer is then required to fill out his/her name, address, etc., and, most important, their e-mail address, so that the letter appearing in the newspapers’ e-mailboxes will look as if they came directly from the writer.

The sample letter, 672 words long, begins “Now is an important anniversary that we must not forget. Iran-backed Hamas has held Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit for 3 years after wounding and kidnapping him from Israel in an unprovoked cross-border attack near the Gaza border.” Underneath are the following “Message Tips”:
* Include a phone number where you can be reached in case the newspaper needs to verify your information.

• Do not cut/paste the talking points above. Put them in your own words to increase the chance that they will be published. (Let’s see: About two-thirds of the letters we received did at least shorten the given material into something resembling a 250-word letter to the editor; the rest merely cut-and-pasted the entire thing.)

  So how did this letter-writing campaign work out? Well, you’re not going to see any of these in the pages of The Journal News – the “writers” are not local, and few of them took the time to write about the issue in their own words. I imagine that the other 77 newspapers on the list will treat them similarly. Again, makes you wonder why such organizations, no matter what they advocate, waste their time and that of their supporters in setting up these transparent camapigns that aren’t going to get past any semi-observant editor.