E-mail inspiring a 'Sun' revolution.

Horror writer Stephen King uses a phrase in some of his books that I like very much: "And the world moved on."

I knew the world had "moved on," the day I got an e-mail from my mother.

My mother and I had last exchanged actual written words about 30 years ago, when I was off seeing the world compliments of the U.S. Navy and letter writing was not yet a lost art.

But one day I logged onto my e-mail, and she popped right up on my screen: "Let me tell you about my operation."

Listen, if my mom is on the 'Net, the rest of the world can't be far behind.

A lot of us in this business are worried about how the Brave New World of the Internet is going to change our lives. And I'll leave to those more profound to question the future of newspapers in an age when everybody and his mom can become a virtual publisher.

At first blush, that prospect doesn't bode well for those of us who work for what has always been the community's main information source, the daily newspaper. After all, online people don't really need us to get their message out, do they?

But I noticed an interesting phenomenon last year: Our summer letters "slump" never materialized.

The summer slump usually runs from about the end of July until after Labor Day. It's a time when our letters to the editor dry up and we have to run more syndicated columns to plug up the holes.

But last summer, our letters flow didn't noticeably slow at all. And we didn't even have Bill Clinton (whose impeachment saved us from the traditional Christmas letters slump in 1998) to thank for it.

We've only been accepting e-mail letters for about a year. And we're getting more letters than ever; only fewer of them come to us via snail mail or fax. And that's fine, because it means ever fewer letters to scan or, worse, type into the system.

It turns out our Web-era letter writers don't think we're irrelevant. They still want to participate in what the late Meg Greenfield, long-time editorial page editor of the Washington Post, called the "argument of daily life." E-mail has made it even more convenient for them to get into the ongoing argument that rages in the daily letters section of the Sun.

As a letters editor and half of a two-person shop, I love e-mail. It's not only made my job easier, but it has increased participation on our letters page. It has also allowed us to become more interactive with our letter writers.

For instance, when we get an e-mail letter without the required address and phone number attached, I can, with a touch of a button, send an instant reply with a stock response: "Thanks for your letter, if you would like us to publish it, please provide the requested information...."

If we have a question about information contained in a letter, that same capability allows us to instantly request clarification or source.

Inquiry: "Exactly where did you get that information about a secret U.N. plot to make us all live in biomes, eat organic vegetables, and ride bicycles?"

Response: "It was on page 3, column 2 of the Fall 1999 edition of the Sons of You-Can-Have-My-Gun-When-You-Pry-It-From-My-Cold-Dead-Fingers Freedom Fighters newsletter, you bleeding-heart commie pink liberal."

In the BE (Before E-mail) age, it was necessary for someone, usually an intern, to get on the phone and run down the answers to such questions.

E-mail also provides the occasional opportunity for some rather interesting personal exchanges. Like the time I got a letter from a local "radical" lawyer, who responded to my request for clarification thusly:

Radical lawyer: "We've never met, but I suspect we would dislike each other intensely on first sight."

Me: "That's funny, usually people have to know me for five or 10 minutes before they get to dislike me intensely."

Moreover, I suspect that with e-mail we have just begun to scratch the surface of the potential to communicate with our letter writers and readers.

Never forget that letter writers tend to be among our most faithful readers, people who are concerned, engaged, and who want to be players in the affairs of their community.

And every time readers send us an e-mail, they give us something more than a letter. We get one more e-mail address to add to an ever-growing database.

Marketers know all about the value of databases. And while I'm not suggesting that we get into the business of selling the e-mail addresses of our letter writers, I do suspect there are ways we can use that database to help build "brand" recognition, solidify reader loyalty, and otherwise enhance the value of this local information "franchise," known as The Gainesville Sun.

How can we use the interactive nature of e-mail to our advantage? One possibility: We're in the process of establishing our own listserv -- similar to a chat room devoted to the discussion of community issues. I hope to incorporate some of those chat-room conversations into a periodic "virtual town hall" feature perhaps once a week on our op-ed page.

At the Sun, we're also going to begin sending periodic e-mail "flash" bulletins about major breaking stories to readers who want to subscribe to that service. If we're going to do that sort of thing anyway, why shouldn't it be a two-way communication?

Flash: "Concerned about drug problems associated with late-night rave activity downtown, the city commission today decided to consider a 2 a.m. bar closing time. What do you think about that?" The next day we could run the news story on page one and immediate reader reaction to it on the opinion pages.

No, I'm with Stephen King. The world has moved on, and we're moving right along with it. You can find us right here, world, at [e-mail].

NCEW member Ron Cunningham is editorial page editor of The Gainesville Sun in Florida.