How to submit letters to the Times

Letters to the Times (like letters to the editor, but our way) are welcomed.

Here are the basic guidelines:

• Keep it short and sweet.
• Focus on Lawrence and Douglas County issues.
• Link to sources to support facts and stats.

Longer version:

We would recommend that letters to the Times be no longer than 400 words. That’s not a hard rule, but shorter letters are more likely to be posted, published in a timely manner, and read by our readers. (Click here for a tool to see how long your draft is.)

We will publish letters that focus on Lawrence and Douglas County topics as opposed to federal, national or international issues. Publications everywhere cover those topics and would likely be glad to consider publishing your letter. Our limited resources are devoted to our local coverage area. (Hint: If you’ve seen an article from the Times about your topic, that’s a good indication that your letter would fit within our guidelines.)

Letters from folks who live in the Lawrence-Douglas County area will be given preference and priority for publication. We do not run anonymous letters or letters submitted under pseudonyms.

We might make edits for grammar, spelling, style and length, but we will not make changes that alter the meaning of the letter.

We may decline letters that we deem unfit to publish or not in line with these guidelines. Opinion pieces that were constructed with generative artificial intelligence (AI, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the like) will likely not be considered for publication.

If your letter contains facts, research and/or statistics, please include your sources (in the form of links to online sources). We appreciate work that is well researched, but we have limited staff availability to do our due diligence in fact-checking. Having sources readily available will expedite publishing.

We want to encourage healthy civil discourse. Although we value the opinions of community members, we want to ensure that this platform is shared among a variety of diverse voices and perspectives; therefore, we may limit the number of letters we publish on a regular basis from very prolific writers.

If that all sounds good …

To submit your letter, please email it to [email protected] (don’t forget the KS!), and include:
• Your full name
• Your pronouns
• Your city of residence
• A title or affiliation, if you’d like.

We will not publish your contact information.

Please send letters in the body of an email or in an editable document (such as a Google Doc) rather than as a PDF.

If you don’t receive a response within a few days, please try emailing again, or reach out via our contact form to make sure we received your letter.

Interested in writing a column for the Times?

The guidelines above also apply to regular columns and guest columns. We’ll want to run your photo and a brief author bio, as you can see from the other columns in our Community Voices section, and preferably include a unique photo or image you’ve provided at the top of the post.

We ask that pieces have a direct tie to Lawrence and/or Douglas County.

We also offer some space for area organizations and organizers to express their views, provide updates and attempt to reach other folks who might share their mission in our Org Corner section.

More Community Voices:

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