Sunshine Week and PublishaLetter.com
— a new Web site that helps people submit letters to the editors of newspapers
around the world — have partnered to give the public an opportunity to write
letters in an online round-table about open government issues.
Unlike the other submissions to PublishaLetter.com, this is not a typical
letter to the editor process, but instead will operate as an online forum
dedicated to open government. Letters will be linked under a special
"Sunshine Week" icon for PublishaLetter.com readers, and there also
will be a link from the Sunshine Week Web site.
PublishaLetter.com was founded to enable people to not only more easily comment
on news issues, but also to post those letters online regardless of whether
they are published elsewhere. While the site does not edit the content, it does
screen for mass mailings, commercial offerings, gratuitous self-promotion,
libel and similarly inappropriate content. To write a letter to the editor of a
publication, users must go through the regular PublishaLetter.com submission
process.
About Sunshine Week:
Sunshine
Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open
government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast
and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others
interested in the public's right to know.
Sunshine
Week is led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and is funded
primarily by a challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
of
Though spearheaded by journalists, Sunshine Week is about the public's right to
know what its government is doing, and why. Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten
and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels,
and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their
communities stronger.
Sunshine Week is a non-partisan initiative whose supporters are conservative,
liberal and everything in between.