With the general election little more than six weeks away, our letters to the editor mailbox is filled daily with passionate missives supporting candidates or skewering the political opposition or media coverage. Many of these letter writers will be disappointed. Their letters won't be considered for publication because they're what journalists now call "Astroturf" -- Internet-based letter-writing campaigns initiated by groups that provide the text or the talking points.

As a copy editor for the Post-Gazette's editorial page, I handle the letters to the editor, which means choosing 50 to 60 for publication each week from about 300 submitted and editing them for grammar, spelling and length and checking the factual content. In the almost seven years I've been at this job, I've tried to weed out letters that are part of a campaign. We want original letters expressing interesting ideas and opinions, rather than talking points generated by an organization or, worse, form letters.

   Alice Rowley is copy editor for the Post-Gazette editorial page (arowley@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1149).  

Before e-mail was commonplace, we occasionally would see mailed letters that were campaigns by neighborhood associations or other groups. Sometimes a letter or two would run before we realized it was a campaign, or we would run one letter, or two letters that were not glaringly repetitive, so the group could air its message.

Astroturf is in a category of its own because of the sheer volume of identical or similar letters -- a result of the Internet's ability to help organizations quickly and efficiently disseminate their messages. About two years ago, we began seeing identical letters with different signatures in our e-mail inbox. We recognized them as part of a campaign and deleted them. I first heard the term "Astroturf" for these letters when Post-Gazette columnist Dennis Roddy wrote about it in January 2003, saying these supposedly grass-roots campaigns were "wholly synthetic."

At the time, papers across the country, including the PG, received letters with this line: "When it comes to the economy, President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership." We received dozens of these. In his column Dennis explained that people could go to a Web site called gopteamleader.com, register as a team leader, type in a ZIP code to get a listing of newspapers in a given area, select the newspapers that should get the message, then either send a letter that had already been composed or compose their own (talking points conveniently provided).

As the presidential campaigns began, the volume of daily Astroturf steadily increased. It's fair to say that initially the Astroturf correspondence was dominated by conservatives and Bush backers; however, I'd say liberals and Kerry backers are catching up. And what started out as something fairly easy to spot -- because of identical language or even the physical features of the letter -- has morphed into something a little more difficult to detect, probably as organizations promoting these letters realized that newspapers were deleting them.

Much to my chagrin, I was responsible for publishing an Astroturf letter on June 4 stating, "New job figures and other recent economic data show that America's economy is strong and getting strong -- and that the president's jobs and growth plan is working."

I didn't recall seeing a similar letter, and it had been sent via regular mail, not e-mail. Several e-mail correspondents quickly pointed out that the letter's first two paragraphs were directly from the Bush re-election Web site -- word for word. In retrospect, yes, the June 4 letter had the "feel" of Astroturf. Now even handwritten or typed letters that are mailed to the PG can be suspect.

Some people have suggested "Googling" questionable letters. That's a good idea, because it would have worked in the case just mentioned. I also use the online service Nexis, which archives newspapers and other publications, to search for key phrases in letters. However, people are now using the message points of their favorite political parties (or candidates or special interest groups) and running with them using their own sentence construction, so Internet searches might not always be helpful.

Some letter writers have told us they don't know what's wrong with using message points or a form letter if they believe what they're repeating. Although the topic of plagiarism -- and whether it is plagiarism or dishonesty if writers are invited to sign their names to someone else's wording -- would require a whole separate column, perhaps letter writers should consider this: Who wants to read a bunch of letters saying the same thing? It's hardly informative or entertaining, so why would we want to run them? If newspapers try not to use such letters, what do these writers accomplish? They waste their time and ours.

Unfortunately, our Astroturf-detection methods and personal radar will never weed out 100 percent of these letters. We now ask many letter writers -- when we call to confirm their letters -- if the letter is their original composition. I'm sure some people think the question odd, and of course they could lie. However, just last week, three letter writers were honest enough to say they had cut and pasted some of their points from Web sites.

However, given that in political discourse people often parrot information from TV ads and other campaign messages, it's inevitable that some letters will state the "facts" as any one side sees them or use buzzwords. Perhaps there's a fine line between the day's general political rhetoric and Astroturf phrases.

My advice to letter writers: Use your own talents and use information you have gathered to compose your letter; it will have a better chance of being printed. Keep in mind that we favor letters responding to stories in the PG. Also, keep your letters as brief as possible, preferably 200 words or less.

And to those who sent us the 524 identical letters Wednesday night and Thursday morning as part of a campaign called "Tell the Truth!": Sorry, we won't be publishing your letters.

First Published: September 19, 2004, 4:00 a.m.