Planet Princeton welcomes letters to the editor and editorials for our opinionator section. Opinion posts are some of the most popular content on Planet Princeton. A letter should be about one topic related to the Princeton region. Send your letters to editor @ planetprinceton.com.
We generally do not publish more than one letter from the same household within any 30-day period. If we select your letter for publication, you consent to our right to republish it, in any and all media. Once a letter is published, we can’t honor requests to unpublish the letter later.
Please submit your letter as plain text in the body of an email, and put “letter to the editor” plus the topic in the subject line of the email, for example, “letter to the editor – affordable housing in Princeton.”
We reserve the right to edit letters. Many people ask how many words a letter to the editor should be. There is no easy answer to that question. Say what you need to say. Be as concise as possible. In general, we recommend that letters are no shorter than 250 words and no longer than 750 words. We do make rare exceptions.
Feel free to suggest a headline for your letter. We reserve the right to edit your suggestion or create our own headline.
Please include your full name, your address, your email address, and a phone number where we can reach you in case we have questions. We don’t accept letters simply signed by a group or organization or submitted by someone who is not a signer of the letter. At least one person’s signature must be on the letter even if it is on behalf of an organization. We do not accept letters signed by more than two people.
Speaking of political campaigns, in an effort to support open campaigns and encourage citizens to run for local office, we don’t run endorsement letters for political office. Any such submissions would be accepted as a paid sponsored post and clearly labeled as such. The primary reason for adopting our policy for endorsement letters is that political campaigns increasingly abuse the purpose and intent of editorial pages. News sites also struggle to cope with being inundated by campaign letters, especially around election time. Although we welcome and celebrate the free exchange of ideas, campaigns often turn to professional writers to market candidates or push campaign talking points, in what amounts to free advertising. The letters are just signed by residents but are actually written by a campaign representative and their systematic release is orchestrated by the campaign.
We retain the right to reject any letter that doesn’t meet our publishing standards.