Guidelines: Political endorsement letters

The Pine Knot News will accept candidate endorsement letters, with the following restrictions.

The suggested word limit is 200 words, but we’ll accept up to 300 words for those who aren’t simply repeating themselves. If we receive multiple letters about a candidate saying the same thing, we won’t run all of them. We don’t charge for endorsement letters like many other papers, but expect our readers to understand that space is valuable.

Endorsements must abide by the same rules as any other letter to the editor: in particular, reader comments should be respectful, and the newspaper reserves the right to edit for factuality, clarity, concision, grammar, newspaper style, libel and length. Letters must be original works by the author. Expect to prove any allegations you make about political candidates, or the letter won’t be published. As usual, we only accept one letter from a writer every 30 days.

We will not publish any endorsement letters the Friday before the election, because candidates would be unable to rebut prior to Election Day. Therefore all endorsement letters must arrive by Oct. 24, for publication in the Oct. 28 issue.