Letters to the Editor are community forum

Published 8:00 am Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Every week, in our Wednesday and Weekend editions of The Union-Recorder, we designate Page 5A as our Opinion Page. This page is an opportunity to voice opinions within our editorial guidelines about issues that matter to you, our readers. It remains consistent each week, on a designated page, so as not to interfere with our regular news coverage.

We must remember that editorial pages, however we feel individually about the opinions they carry, celebrate freedom of speech and provide a redress of grievances guaranteed in the First Amendment.

They also help provoke thought and dialogue, and provide a means through which to examine issues in a way that we may have not thought of before.

Throughout the history of print journalism, strong opinion pages have carried with them strong opinions. Newspapers, historically, have taken a rich tradition of taking on issues on their opinion pages, both social and political.

Our Opinion Page is always clearly distinguished from our news pages. Our news articles aim for fairness and unbiased coverage, reporting what happens as it happened as accurately as possible. Conversely, the opinion page is a designated space intended for commentary and taking on a point of view.

This page includes our locally-generated editorials, columnists, political cartoons and letters to the editor.

Our local editorial board generates our local editorials. Our board includes our publisher, Keith Barlow, our Director of Audience Development, Michael Evans, our Editor, Natalie Davis Linder, as well as two members of the local community that voluntarily serve on our board for a year. We meet regularly to discuss topics for our local editorials and have regular dialogue. While we do not always reach a consensus on each topic we discuss, our discussions help shape the opinions contained in the local editorials you see each week.

Our local columnists included Dr. Jay Hodges, Brenda Brown and Alvin Richardson. Occaisionally, we publish columns from our sister newspapers and from the Georgia Press Association, of which we are members, that we feel are timely and relevant to our readership. Sometimes we also publish guest columns written by local elected officials. Some of the columns we publish are humorous, some take on a serious tone, some are reflective, while others are intended to be educational.

We also often publish editorial cartoons. Editorial cartoons are intended to provide strong commentary and often include sarcasm and irony as a means to express the cartoonist’s point of view. They do not necessarily express the views of our newspaper, but they are intended to provoke thought on topical subjects.

Our Letters to the Editor section is your forum. The designated space for letters allows you to share your opinions with us. Sometimes these letters are critical of local leadership, call out concerns about local issues, and some are also critical of us as a newspaper. That’s OK, too. This is your free and open public forum as long as the letters fit within our editorial policy guidelines, which are included each week on the Opinion Page as well.

We encourage our readers to write letters and help generate conversation on issues. Your letters certainly do not have to carry our point of view, but they are required to fit within our editorial policy guidelines. Letters can be submitted to: ndavis@unionrecorder.com, faxed to 478-453-1449, mailed to P.O. Box 520 Milledgeville, Ga. 31061 or dropped off here at our office at 165 Garrett Way. We do require that a name and phone number be included for verification purposes.

We look forward to hearing from you.