are distributed on the Internet or otherwise, to be copied or rewritten and submitted as personal letters. Although LTE management gets little attention in trade journals, one organization, the National Conference of Editorial Writers, often includes essays on LTE management in its newsletter, The Masthead, and at its annual meetings. Among the NCEW's strongest champions for LTEs was Ronald D. Clark of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who wrote, "Consider letters as a barometer of how well (you are) engaging readers or viewers. The more you receive, the more you're connecting. The fewer you receive, the stronger the sign that you're putting the masses to sleep." On the other hand, many editors will allow the publication of anonymous letters where the details of name and address of the author are not printed, but are disclosed to the editor. This can promote a debate of issues that are personal, contentious or embarrassing, yet are of importance to raise in a public debate. Sometimes a letter to the editor in a local newspaper, such as the "Dear IRS" letter written by Ed Barnett to the Wichita Falls Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas, will end up receiving attention from the national media. Academic In academic publishing, letters to the editor of an academic journal are usually open postpublication reviews of a paper, often critical of some aspect of the original paper. The authors of the original paper sometimes respond to these with a letter of their own. Controversial papers in mainstream journals often attract numerous letters to the editor. Good citation indexing services list the original papers together with all replies. Depending on the length of the letter and the journal's style, other types of headings may be used, such as peer commentary. There are some variations on this practice. Some journals request open commentaries as a matter of course, which are published together with the original paper, and any authors' reply, in a process called open peer commentary. The introduction of the "epub ahead of print" practice in many journals now allows unsolicited letters to the editor (and authors' reply) to appear in the same print issue of the journal, as long as they are sent in the interval between the electronic publication of the original paper and its appearance in print. Misrepresentation Submitting a letter under a false name to shill in support or to criticize an opponent can