THE 2007 LETTER TO THE EDITOR AWARDS

For the fourth year in a row, it is our pleasure to recognize Robert
Sharpe as Published Letter to the Editor Writer of the Year for 2007
for the number of letters that he had published during the year.

Robert Sharpe had 273 letters published last year, raising his career
total to an amazing 1,913 published, without a doubt the record for
any drug policy reform letter writer.

In 1999, Robert started writing letters as a student at George
Washington University and a member of their Students for Sensible
Drug Policy ( http://www.ssdp.org/ ). Then he often used his SSDP
chapter membership in his signature block to improve his chances of
being published. We first recognized Robert's letter writing
accomplishments in May, 2000 as you may see in this photo
http://www.mapinc.org/images/Robert.jpg

Today Robert writes as a volunteer for CSDP ( http://www.csdp.org ).
He signs his letters "Robert Sharpe, Policy Analyst, Common Sense for
Drug Policy, Washington, D.C." Robert tells us that he is spending
about an hour a day after work sending out letters, and yes, many
more are not published than are. Robert has provided us with his tips
for letter writing success at http://www.mapinc.org/resource/tips.htm.

You may read all of Robert's published letters at
http://www.mapinc.org/writer/Robert+Sharpe.

The year's end brought another award: MAP's Published Letters
Platinum Award for achieving one thousand published letters to Kirk
Muse. You may view the award at
http://www.mapinc.org/lte_awards/lte_platinum.htm. You may read all
of Kirk's published letters at http://www.mapinc.org/writer/Kirk+Muse

Kirk writes, "'Powerful Paragraphs' helped me go from 1 in 50 letters
published to 1 in 5 published!"
http://www.clearwriter.com/cleartips/powerfulparagraphs/

Kirk also supports the Media Awareness Project by newshawking news
clippings, of which 894 were archived last year. By newshawking, Kirk
sees targets and frequently sends his letters to the editor to the
newspapers before others are even aware of the news clipping. Kirk is
pictured, with MAP editor Beth Wehrman, at the 2005 Drug Policy
Alliance conference here http://www.mapinc.org/images/kirkdpa.jpg

Each month during the year, MAP recognizes a letter writer for the
number of letters published during the previous month. Those
recognized during the past year, with links to the DrugSense Weekly
announcements, are shown on this webpage
http://www.mapinc.org/lte_awards/monthly.php

And every week a committee of letter writing experts selects one
published letter to recognize as the Letter Of The Week, by this
process http://www.mapinc.org/lte_awards/weekly.php#how

The list of those letters is at http://www.mapinc.org/lte_awards/weekly.php

We know of no major drug policy reform organization, none, which
somewhere on its website does not encourage the writing of letters to
the editor. It is perhaps the way that Internet connected activists
living anywhere may communicate their views to the huge audience of
newspaper editorial page readers at very little cost other than their
time. The difference between MAP's news clipping service and others
is the fact that we provide the contact information with each
clipping for writing letters. We hope you will take advantage of it
to write your own letters in the year ahead. If you need suggestions
for success please go to this webpage http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

We thank all of you who do write letters. A graphical display of the
accomplishments, with links to their letters by simply clicking on
their names, for the top 100 letter writers is at
http://www.mapinc.org/lte/topwrit.htm

A special thank you from MAP to Derek Rea. It is Derek who volunteers
his time every week by reading each and every published letter and
then recommends to the selection committee letters to consider for
Letter Of The Week. He also keeps us straight on the Letter Writer of
The Month recognitions. Derek is in a rare photo with other MAPsters,
seated, on the right, at http://www.mapinc.org/images/hawk3.jpg

Richard Lake is the Senior Editor for the Media Awareness Project's
news clipping service.