Starlord said:

1. replace the old ones with full cut off croba heads.
2. check the areas and do away with ones that where close to another light
and there by remove some of the cost of the light bill to the city and make
the sky over Mojave just a tiny bit darker, instead of becomeing another
watesfull Los Angeles cess pool of light.

If this is any indication of the e-mail you sent, it's no wonder the
newspaper editor thought you were a crank.

Editors firmly believe in a correlation between spelling and good
grammar and intelligence (whether that opinion is right or wrong,
doesn't matter. That's how they think). If you want your letter to the
editor actually published, then make damn sure that everything is
right.

Of equal importance, is to not rant about the decline of civilization
in general due to something that he would perceive as trivial. To him
and his readers, a little extra light is about as important to the
general scheme of things as gum on the sidewalk. Unsightly, but
certainly not something to get in a twist about. Instead talking about
how city lights are uselessly pointed at the sky and not at the ground
where they'd actually do some good, would be a much better course of
action.

I wouldn't bother with trying the newspaper again though. You've
already lost all credibility with the Editor, and if it's a weekly
small-town paper, it likely doesn't carry any weight with your local
power authority anyway.