With election time quickly approaching and letters regarding local candidates for office already streaming into the newsroom, we would like to alert our readers about the policies we have in place for our opinion page.
We will not publish letters from any candidates that smack of electioneering. There is plenty of room in our news pages for politicians to have a voice — our news stories and pre-election coverage will give them a chance to get their message out, and candidates are welcome to buy advertisements that give them the freedom to say what they want, when they want.
As for general letters of endorsement, we will accept them from citizens who are not directly involved in a politician’s campaign. However, it is important for our letter writers to understand that we occasionally receive several submissions that more or less say the same thing about the same candidates. In those cases, we will run only a representative sampling of the letters.
We want our letters pages to be a forum for the discussion of issues that are of interest or concern to our readers, but we also have to be careful that the pages are not misused for political purposes. For example, we will not allow those who seek or hold elected office to use letters to advance their own political agendas.
Only when he or she is discussing important issues of common interest and concern to residents — in a logical and reasoned fashion — can a sitting politician have a letter published. Politicians will be limited to one letter every six weeks. Our letters pages are not a platform for politicians and their supporters and detractors to take potshots at one another.
It is also important to remember that letters must adhere to a 250-word limit. Guest columns should adhere to a 750-word limit. In the interest of variety on our opinion pages, readers are limited to having one submission published every four weeks.
That said, we welcome our readers to send along submissions discussing issues that are of interest to the community at large. And we’ll do our part to make sure our opinion pages fairly reflect our readership’s thoughts and feelings.