[Leica] letters from the editor

[Brian Reid]

For decades I was an editor (and occasionally THE editor) of a weekly 
online publication covering the worldwide Anglican church (Episcopal, 
Church of England, Scottish Episcopal Church, etc.) It started in 1994, 
and at its peak in 2010 it had 250,000 readers worldwide.

It had a "letters to the editor" section that before the era of Facebook 
and Twitter often had 20 or 30 publishable letters each week.

As instant media gradually eliminated interest in waiting a week to see 
your letter published, I needed to work harder and harder to get people 
to submit letters to us. Towards the end, I often resorted to submitting 
"Letters from the Editor", in which I used pseudonyms to craft 
realistic-looking letters and submitted them to myself. It was fun, a 
lot of work, and ultimately pointless. I closed the Letters to the 
Editor section in 2016 and I shut down the publication itself in 2019.

This week I thought briefly about doing something similar with the 2021 
LUG Yearbook. Every year we lose LUG members and every year there are 
fewer images submitted. Could I submit photographs from fake people, 
keeping to myself the secret that I had taken those pictures myself?

No.

I'm an expert writer, and I can craft a letter to the editor that no one 
will think was written by me. But I'm a duffer photographer, and I can't 
make images worthy of padding the yearbook without them looking like I 
took them.

All of the LUG yearbooks contain only pictures taken by real people. 
This year there just won't be as many of them.

http://leica-users.org/yearbook/submitting.html