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With the Town Election approaching, we thought it was a good time to remind readers about our Political Content Policy, and specifically the protocol for submitting endorsement letters for candidates in the Town Election. You can find all of our policies at any time on our About Page.
For endorsement letters, here’s what you need to know:
Our Policies
We accept letters to the editor supporting candidates for elected positions in Sudbury Town Elections only. We also accept letters supporting or opposing ballot questions and articles at Town Meetings. Such letters must meet the standards of our blanket Opinion Section Policy, and in addition must meet the requirements of our Political Content Policy including:
- Be no longer than 750 words.
- Be submitted by a Sudbury resident.
- Include the name of the author.
- Be submitted via email with the name, address and phone number of the author. We will not publish the address or phone number, but we need to verify the person who sent the letter and confirm if they are a Sudbury resident.
Please review both the Opinion Section Policy and Political Content Policy in their entirety before submitting. Both are available here.
Deadlines
We cease publishing letters of support for candidates and ballot questions one week prior to the Annual Town Election. We cease publishing letters on Town Meeting articles one week prior to the Annual or Special Town Meeting. Please note: that is a change from last year when the cutoff was two weeks prior to an election or town meeting. All letters must be submitted by 12:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 23.
How to Submit
In terms of what to submit, we request that you:
- Include a short headline for your letter.
- Send your letter as a Google Document link or Word Document attachment via email to [email protected]. We also accept letters as body text in an email. Pro tip: Google Documents have less formatting problems than other file types when uploading to the publishing system.
- OPTIONAL: Share a landscape-oriented, high-quality JPEG or PNG feature image to be included with your letter. We need the file as a standalone email attachment, not embedded in a document. If you do not submit an image, a generic “Support” image (the one at the top of this story) will be used for the feature image. We do accept letters with multimedia components, so long as the media clearly supports the content of the written letter rather than evading the word count requirement.
If you have questions about your letter submission, please feel free to contact Sudbury Weekly at any time for clarification.