Fit to print

An editor I once worked for was fond of saying, paraphrasing Arthur Miller as it turns out, that a good newspaper was a ‘nation in conversation with itself’.

Good newspapers, or at least large ones, all used to have a letters editor, usually an old hand who would spend their days sifting the missives from citizens, picking the ones who had something interesting or controversial to say, or, indeed, just keeping the conversation going.