Slander - Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person's reputation.

Libel - A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.

The letter writer your talking about obvoiusly doesn't know what slander means, or he would have said, "I was most angry at the writer's libel of Stu Crawford." Even if he had used the correct word, it would have been a stretch, because it's not libel until it damagaes Stu's reputation. Up until that point it's just sort of rude.

While we are on the topic of newspapers, I got the two pages ad-free in my newspaper this week. The paper comes out at around noon, and I haven't seen it yet, but when my article gets put online, I'll make sure to link to it.