The presidential campaign wasn’t the only thing that came to an end after the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary election.

So did the publication of primary-related letters to the editor that had graced Page B-3 of The Sunday Telegraph nearly every week since Oct. 7.

Given that, I thought it would be worthwhile – if somewhat scary – to look back and share with you some statistics on the number and types of letters published that address important questions like:

Were we fair? Did we publish an equal number of letters about candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties? Did the number of letters published reflect the total number of letters received on those candidates? And how did we deal with the sensitive issue of pro-candidate vs. anti-candidate letters?

As you may recall, I reached out to you and our Reader Advisory Network in late September seeking your guidance on how to handle the anticipated avalanche of letters from all over the country.

Based on your feedback, I decided to restrict the publication of these letters to once a week in the Sunday newspaper, the one day we have a two-page opinion section. That way they wouldn’t overwhelm the publication of your letters on other topics during that three-month period.

Before going straight to the numbers, I thought I would share with you the guidelines I tried to follow in determining what to publish each week. This doesn’t necessarily mean I always succeeded, of course, and there were a couple of weeks during that time when I was out of the office on vacation:

• Given the large field of candidates in the race – there were 16 when we started – I decided no candidate would get more than one letter each week.
• The letters would be split evenly between the Democratic and Republican candidates, though that wasn’t always possible in weeks when space only allowed for an odd number of letters.
• Most, if not all, letters were written by individuals who live in our circulation area. I also tried to give preference, whenever possible, to writers who actually had taken the time to see their candidate in person.
• The frequency of appearance was intended to represent the number of letters we received on that particular candidate. That is to say, the more letters we received about a candidate, the more frequent letters about that candidate should appear.
• And while this was not my intent when I started in October, I ended up shying away from publishing letters whose sole purpose was to criticize one of the candidates. (More on this later.)
  

So what did the numbers show at the end of this process? Here is a breakdown of how many letters were published by each candidate over that 13-week period.

Democrats: Obama, 12; Clinton, 10; Richardson, 9; Biden, 3; Edwards, 3; Kucinich, 1; Dodd, 0; Gravel, 0

Republicans: Paul, 8; McCain, 7; Romney, 4; Giuliani, 3; Huckabee, 3; Thompson, 3; Tancredo, 1; Hunter, 0

To save you the trouble of doing the math, here’s the final total: 38 letters about Democratic candidates, 29 about Republicans. To put that into election terms, the Democratic letters captured 54 percent of the space. (We also published three letters that weren’t about any of the candidates for a grand total of 70.)

Now before anyone starts crying foul, a couple of things to keep in mind. Particularly during the early weeks of this process, the majority of letters we received were about the Democratic candidates in general and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in particular.

Early on, I remember finishing one particular week and realizing virtually all the letters that hadn’t been used yet related to those two candidates.

The Democratic leanings are reflected in the number of letters we did not publish, too. The number of confirmed primary letters that never made it onto our pages totaled 83, excluding those letters that arrived too late for publication between the Friday before the primary and the day of the primary.

Of those letters, 20 people chose not to write in favor of their candidate but to blast one of the others. Of those, not surprisingly, Clinton was at the top of the list with 10, followed by Mitt Romney (4), Rudy Giuliani (2), Mike Huckabee (2), John McCain (1) and Obama (1).

Of the pro-candidate letters we didn’t have space to publish, Obama led the field with 17, followed by Clinton (11), Ron Paul (7), McCain (6) and John Edwards (3). No other candidate received more than two pro-letters.

So there you have it. Now it’s your turn. Did we handle the selection and publication of these letters fairly? If not, what do you think we should have done differently?

Obviously, there isn’t much we can do to change it now, but your feedback would be most appreciated when we start preparing for the (yikes!) 2012 primary four years from now.

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor of The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.