Dear Editor: The top 5 reasons you write to us

We get letters (dozens) and e-mails (thousands) and faxes (a few) each week here at the L.A. Times, and once the bad and the ugly get weeded out, the good fall into distinct categories. Eryn Brown, writing in our Opinion Blog, breaks it down:

After we cut out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns (last week's biggie: complaints about Jerome Corsi's "Obama Nation") and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems), we usually are left with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper every week.

In the week starting Aug. 17, we received almost 600 usable letters, 346 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

The presidential election: 181 letters, reacting to 15 stories covering everything from the forum at Saddleback Church to Cindy McCain's hand injury.

Russia: 86 letters, responding to three stories about the conflict in Georgia.

The other three topics, and an interesting chart -- in the rest of Eryn's post here.

-- Veronique de Turenne

Comments

[a.j. ovitsky]

Apropos choosing Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, does she know anything about Hindu culture? Muslim culture? Her first assignment is likely to be Pakistan. Yes, I know she's come a long way since Arkansas, but I still feel the need to pray for her to have words of wisdom when she steps up to the plate next month to try to disarm the Mumbai situation that is still boiling over...into a potential nuclear confrontation on the border of Pakistan and India. Time to put away campaign rhetoric and let actions speak louder than words, I sincerely hope Obama has a plan of disarmament.

[kay frederick]

Congratulations on printing the picture SAFE on page A21 on Friday January 16, 2009. It is stunning and should become renowned. Kay Frederick, Huntington Beach

[A. L. McMahon]

I think that it is ridiculous that the city has raised parking prices, spent money on parking stations and increased parking pay times at a time when people are losing their jobs and one in ten Californians are out of work. Businesses are closing down and I doubt that it helps any California business that people cannot afford to park outside of the establishments--hence, businesses lose more business. Once again, the City is brilliant!