On Monday, Don Luskin blogged about an interview with New York Times editorial board editor Gail Collins in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in which Collins said:

The terrible fact is we don’t get many pro-Bush letters to the editor. When we do, we try to publish them. As soon as it’s [the next State of the Union address] over, go to your e-mail and send us a two-paragraph, pithy letter, saying what a great speech that was. And your chances of being published will be really, really, really good. Our letters editor really looks for those kinds of letters and he doesn’t get nearly enough of them.

If the New York Times really only receives a handful of letters to the editor from conservatives, then I must get cc’d on every single one of them. But one of Luskin’s readers comes up with a good way to test Collins’ statement:

How about asking Poor and Stupid readers to cc you whenever they send letters to the editor of the Times? With only a modest amount of space on your web site, you could archive these letters and keep tabs on how many are actually printed. We could then know, for example, whether one’s chance of being published shortly after the SOTU address is in fact “really, really, really good”, or whether Collins was embroidering the truth a bit. Besides, you already show us the text of your letters that the Times won’t publish. Give us more!

Keep an eye out for that. I think another good feature would be a “Calame Watch.” I get cc’d on letters to public editor Barney Calame all the time. If you cc me on one of these letters, let me know if you ever get a response other than the automatic, “Thank you for your comments. Everything sent to this mailbox is read by either me or my associate, Joseph Plambeck. If a further reply is appropriate, you will be hearing from us shortly.” If you’ve written a good letter and you don’t get a response, I’ll post the letter on the blog.