Is this letter censuring or just being sarcastic?

This is a letter by physicist Richard Feynman to his university's student newspaper. I am a non-native english speaker and I have trouble understanding in what spirit this letter was written them, is it just casual sarcasm, or condescension, or what?

Solution 1:

None of the above. Feynman (one of my heroes, by the way) was being ironic: telling the newspaper staff that they had violated all the rules of professional journalism by

• being casual rather than stilted (using a candid photo instead of a stiff, posed shot; spelling "says" as "sez", which is bad English but accurate slang)
• being considerate and humble (apologizing for taking up Feynman's time, rather than assuming that the interview was more important than anything else he might be doing)
• being "clear, comprehensible, well-written and accurate" and not putting words in Feynman's mouth.

If you read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman or What Do You Care What Other People Think? (both of which I highly recommend), you'll see that he had very little use for the self-importance of journalists, and much less patience for the innumerable interviews (especially after he won the Nobel Prize) in which he was constantly mis-quoted and his scientific work mis-explained.

Essentially, he was thanking the interviewer for not being "professional", because he was sick and tired of professional interviews.