« Two sentences can go a long way »

About 80 of my columns have graced the opinion pages of the BG News since October 18, 2001, not counting a dozen or so editorials I've contributed to.

I've submitted Letters to the Editor to the Toledo Blade, but to no avail. However, my father has had several printed submissions in the Blade over the years.

Even my mom got in once.

Just when I was about to give up writing forever and become a Portugese national hero as a bullfighter, Sports Illustrated came and saved the day.

They printed my letter to the editor.

That's right. Sports Illustrated.

Sports. Fucking. Illustrated.

Not the website, not SI for Kids, not SI on Campus, not Iraqi SI. Sports Illustrated the magazine.

3 million subscribers. An estimated 23 million readers each week.

The BG News (which is still awesome) has a circulation of 9,500. The Toledo Blade has a circulation of about 140,000. Great numbers, but come on -- Sports Illustrated!

If you don't believe me, you are probably a step ahead. But I would consider picking up this week's issue (Kevin Garnett on the cover) and turning to page 14 and looking on the right hand side. You'll read something by a young Matt Sussman, which goes a little something like this:

"It's refreshing to see that Steinbrenner still has feelings similar to the rest of us, even if he has significantly more money than most of us. Verducci's story gave me two things I had hoped for: a reason to admire Steinbrenner and a license to continue hating him."

The letter was my reaction to SI writer Tom Verducci's story about New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, which was in the May 10 issue (Smarty Jones was on the cover).

I e-mailed them a letter that was two sentences long. They printed my letter as having two sentences.

Imagine if I had written 500 words. No way is that getting in the magazine!

Yet the BG News current submission policy says that Letters to the Editor are to be less than 500 words. Folks, that's practically a column.

My biggest pet peeve since becoming an editor is the ramblings of these letters we receive. They often times say nothing new that hasn't already been said, and when we don't print them, they bitch and moan on bgnews.com's message boards that their submissions don't get printed.

People, this is the most sincere advice I can give you in terms of having your stuff printed: less is more. If it's not short, they're gonna make it short, and your message will be lost.

Brevity is the key. If you want to write something long-winded and unorganized (like this post), go to Blogger and get your own.

But in the meantime...

"Awesome, super-cool, hot shit I'm in Sports Illustrated!"
- posted by Suss @ 3:07 PM | Permanent Link To This Post