By Seth Boyes,
Seth Boyes, News Editor
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m ready for this election season to be over. Thankfully, that day is steadily creeping closer and closer. And, as promised in my Sept. 5 column, we’ve hit that point in the cycle when we’ll be keeping all politically-centric content off our opinion page next week — but don’t worry, it’s just for one week.
I’ve hardly known an opinion page that wasn’t largely fueled by political happenings, but clearing the opinion page of politics the week ahead of an election helps ensure neither side of any particular race or ballot issue gets the proverbial last word before people head to the polls. In fact, come to think of it, we may need to do this again in a couple months while folks in Decorah prepare to vote in the special city council race.
But, in the meantime, I’d encourage all of us to consider that the value of the opinion page remains, whether it’s election season or not. National-level issues can often dominate our thoughts, especially while coughing on all the dust candidates kick up along the campaign trail. But the opinion page will still be here when the dust settles, and so will this community. And I imagine there are other local topics folks may have some feelings about outside the political arena. Those voices are welcome here too.
I guess what I’m saying is this — don’t forget about the opinion page after the polls close.
This page is propelled by you and your neighbors, dear reader. Many a small-town editor struggles to fill their opinion page with meaningful local content — assuming they’re able to gather enough phrases to print one in the first place. But that’s not the case here in Decorah, and I hope it doesn’t become the case after the results are in on Nov. 5.
We’ll still be here, and I hope you will be too.
Now, on a related note, it’s also recently been requested of us that we share our policy regarding letters to the editor — so here goes. While there isn’t a formal document that lays out our policy for letters to the editor, there are plenty of guidelines we do our best to follow.
Obviously we don’t allow things like libelous claims or profanity. We also try our best not to print misinformation that may be included in letters to the editor. Letters can mention candidates’ names, which is fine (it’s pretty hard sometimes to make one’s point without being specific like that). They just can’t endorse candidates — or businesses for that matter. That line can get a little blurry when authors want to express their views on the actions or behavior of a particular party or person, but we try to do our best so that both sides have the chance to voice their opinions. Some authors may have a proverbial axe to grind (I once heard about a guy who still signed his emails with ‘Never trust a Toshiba printer’ something like that 15 or 20 years after he had supposedly been wronged by the company) but that alone shouldn’t preclude anyone from contributing to the local opinion page.
Even if you have something critical to say about the paper, let us have it. Criticism is often just as important as praise.
Other than that, we don’t accept anonymous letters or letters which use pen names, and authors need to include their street address, though we’ll only publish their city of residency. We also don’t accept form letters, which are basically templates that campaigns and other groups send to their supporters in hopes they’ll sign a copy and submit it to their local paper to pass it off as locally produced (admittedly, it’s hard to catch those all the time). I’m not opposed to printing legislative columns on the opinion page in order to allow readers to hear from their state and federal lawmakers, but so far we’ve had enough letters to keep the opinion page full without that — again, I imagine plenty of editors in communities our size would envy the level of participation you’ve displayed on the opinion page, dear reader.
I may be forgetting some particulars off the top of my head, but I’d say that’s our policy in a nutshell.
So remember, if you’ve got something to say about the dry weather we’ve had the past several weeks, the role of agriculture in northeast Iowa or some meaningful interaction you observed in your own backyard, tell us about it. But if your message is magnetized with party-polarity, just hold off a week or so, and we’ll do our best to keep the ball rolling until then.
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