The general hope was that people would see the letters, let the spirit move them and then write in to express their opinion. Yeah, that didn’t happen. It spurred discussion, but all of it happened online in the comments section. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not the desired outcome.
But sometimes desire can cloud reasonable expectations. It would have been reasonable to assume the convenient system of discussion would be used.

And boy was it used (editor’s note: Yes, I just wrote that). The letters were always among the most commented on articles online. Four of those letters can be found under the “popular” tab on the bottom right hand side of our website.

I wager that the reason they are so popular is because readers really enjoy knowing the opinions of the individuals around them. That is, the opinions of the people who don’t approach it as a job. Letters are more raw and far less point-oriented than columns or editorials. In a roundabout way, they embody the spirit of the opinion page.

Unfortunately, no one writes letters anymore. I don’t only mean in the traditional pen-and-paper way, I mean letters to the editor in general. Commenting on an article online is faster and discussions can actually be carried out almost in real time. Comments cut out the middleman and allow quicker access between readers.

There are pitfalls. When a letter is sent to us, we can take time to clean up the writing and look at its content first. That’s why there aren’t many letters like this:

“Mom … stop posting on my college newspaper message boards. You are embarrassing me. Oh, and stop writing my name on the label in my underwear.”

Granted, that’d be a pretty sweet letter, but when a writer has to use his or her real name, accountability becomes a factor. Accountability is what newspapers trade on. By extension so do letters to the editor. The catch here is that it is not the readers who need to change; it’s the paper.

There is no point lamenting the decline of letters and railing against Internet commenters. Part of a newspaper’s job is to deliver a product to readers in the most effective way possible; that isn’t done by trying to force readers to do things our way.

Instead of waiting for you to come to us, we want to come to you. The thought is to blend the opinions of the readers and community with those of one of the opinion desk’s writers. I’m talking about Gonzo journalism.

For those who don’t know, Gonzo-style journalism makes the writer a part of the story. In simple terms, it’s a news story written in first-person. It would be about sending individuals from the opinion desk out into the community to find the thoughts that only rarely pass through the paper.

This won’t be like “man on the street,” where we supply the issue and people answer the question. We want people to supply the issues or events and then we’ll talk about them. After typing that, it seems to be the exact same thing regular news is about.

But I think it could be more. Not everything makes it into the paper. I can think of several stories I personally covered that never made it in (apologies). The idea of this new feature will be to actively present to readers the opinions of the community. The writer, in this case, is simply the lens through which the opinion is focused.

There will be a preliminary example running on this page in the near future and it would be great if readers would submit ideas for things they would like to see covered. Perhaps this will fly, perhaps it won’t. Either way, we’ll keep trying.

David Barker is the State News opinion editor. Reach him at barkerd@msu.edu.