Editorial: News welcomes opinions through letter to the editor
Over the past few weeks, The Western News has gone through a facelift.
Design changes, page organization, the addition of new features, increased sports coverage and professional style guidelines are among the additions. The primary goal of this publication is to accurately present news to readers in an objective manner with a selection of news representing the many facets of our community.
This particular section of the newspaper - the Opinion page - has also undergone change. Perhaps one of the most noticeable are new guidelines for letters to the editor.
The Western News' Opinion page is intended to provide a forum for a variety of views on issues that impact our community. Besides our editorials, guest columns and cartoons, we invite readers to participate in the exchange of opinions through a letter to the editor.
However, we do need to implement a set of guidelines to give all of our readers an opportunity to share their viewpoints. One of the biggest issues we've seen over the past several weeks involves length. At this time, we routinely receive letters of 400 words or more with many even exceeding 600 words. That's much longer than the desired length even for our news stories.
Besides the space issue, we want to give all readers a chance to comment. In that vein, The Western News will publish letters no longer than 300 words. We reserve the right to edit them for length, grammar, clarity, taste and legal issues. To allow fair access, an individual letter writer may be published once in any 30-day period.
The Western News prefers that letter writers submit their letters by e-mail but we will accept letters which are typewritten and within the word limit. We discourage handwritten letters because the chance of the newspaper making a mistake increases because some handwriting can be difficult to read.
The editor typically considers the following when making a decision about what letters will be published:
€ The letter is about a current event.
€ The letter is something others might be interested in.
€ The letter adds to a local issue currently under public debate.
€ The letter is clear, that is, the writer quickly gets to the point.
€ The letter is written and argued in a responsible manner and good taste.
The types of letters that have less of a chance of being published include those that are sent to politicians or those that criticize businesses. At this time, the biggest reasons for letters ending up in the rejection pile are because of length, difficult-to-read handwriting, issues with no local connection and no address or phone number.
From time to time, we like to publish guest columns exclusive to The Western News from readers with some sort of special insight on a particular issue. These submissions have different guidelines in terms of word count. E-mail the editor to pitch an idea.
Letters can be submitted in the following manner:
€ E-mail: thewesternnews@gmail.com .
€ Postal mail: The Western News, P.O. Box 1377, Libby, MT 59923-1377.
€ Fax: 406-293-7187.
€ Office drop-off: 311 California Ave., in Libby.
However letters are submitted, they must include the writer's name, street address and phone number to allow the News to verify authorship. Under no circumstances will the News publish unsigned letters.
Readers, thank you in advance for your viewpoints on issues impacting Libby, Troy and northwestern Montana.
- Brad Fuqua, managing editor