As a follow-up to last week’s entry about political letters, today (Oct. 23) is the last day we will accept letters to the editor regarding the upcoming general election.

While it seems like we’ve gotten a lot of letters to the editor lately, I looked back at the last issue to publish political letters in October of 2004, the last presidential election year, for perspective. The Oct. 24, 2004, issue of the Messenger contained 36 letters. Of those, 22 letters were about local candidates for office and only 6 addressed the presidential election. The majority of the 22 letters regarding local candidates dealt with the district attorney’s race between Jana Jones and Michael Carrillo.

Interestingly, it seems this year the majority of the letters are dealing with the presidential election rather than the local election.

If you have an opinion you’d like to share on the election, share it today. Thanks.

One of the questions we as journalists always want to know is what stories generate the most reader interest? Which stories are people taking the time to read, and what stories are they skipping over?

In the past, it’s been difficult to answer those questions. But the Internet gives us some idea because we track the number of “page views” related to stories. I thought I’d share our stats for the 1-month period from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 as compiled by our Web master, Todd Griffith. The stories are listed by headline, date of publication and number of page views.

1. Woman arrested for sexual assault of boy (Oct. 2)  - 1,938 views

2. Veteran killed in wreck (Sept. 25)  - 1,127 views

3. Students and graduate arrested for murder (Oct. 2) - 928 views

4. Woman dies in US 380 accident (Oct. 12) - 838 views

5. Becky Reed obit (Sept. 14) - 770 views

6. Football predictions: Let the games begin (Oct. 9) - 664 views

7. Picking up the pieces (Sept. 21) - 637 views

8. Friday Night Predictions (Sept. 25) - 620 views

9. James Earl Moyers obit (Sept. 25) - 607 views

10. Soldiering on (Oct. 5) - 587 views

The political season always brings an increase in the number of letters to the editor I receive. In many cases, one letter writer’s view will prompt another letter writer to respond, and the original letter writer will respond, and the cycle continues.

Typically, we’ve allowed that response, although if we start getting letters basically repeated, or if the tone of the letters turn too personal, we have to draw the line.

And since this is a presidential election year, people are sharing their strong opinions. Some are sharing them at length, so much so that the letters are too long to print.

So here are a few tips for writing letters if you want them published:

1. Always include your name, a phone number and the town where you live.

2. Keep the letters short and to the point, under 400 words.

3. While letters are mostly opinions, if you claim something as a fact, please try to include where you received the information.

4. It’s fine to disagree with someone, but try to keep the personal attacks out of the letter. (In other words, don’t call people names - we are adults.)

We also normally cut off running our political letters about a week before the election. That keeps someone from getting in a “cheap shot” or an accusation at the last minute that the candidate can not respond to.

Your cutline here.

We count our blessings every day up here at the Mess to have someone as talented as Joe Duty on our staff. Not only is he talented, but his work ethic is second to none.

Joe takes a lot – a LOT – of photos, and only a small percentage of them ever make it into the paper. I often wish readers could see more of the “artsy” or humorous photos Joe brings back for us.

Here’s an example of a photo Joe brought back from a shoot at the county annex being built in Bridgeport. We published a story and photo in Thursday’s paper. In the photo above, Joe had the county’s engineer Chad Davis place his boots at the top of a mound of dirt to create a funny optical illusion.

Now is your chance: write a cutline for this photo (and be as silly as you want to be.) If we get a good response, the photo and your cutline might just show up in a future issue of the Messenger. Be sure and give us your name so we can give proper credit.