Dear reader:
As we enter the municipal/school board election season, I thought it might be helpful to provide some guidelines related to our letters to the editor pages.
As I’ve written in previous notes like this, there is really no good reason for newspapers not to be more open with readers about how they operate.
Most of the guidelines for letters to the editor don’t change just because it is election season. Please e-mail them to editor@pqbnews.com (no attachments please), keep them shorter than 350 words and include a daytime phone number for confirmation purposes.
As usual, we ask that you keep your letters as brief as possible — it allows us to publish more. If your letter is longer than 350 words, we will send it back to you for revision, which means you could lose your spot in the que.
Letters to the editor are generally published in the order we have received them. If the amount of letters we have been receiving of late is any indication, please expect that you would only have one letter published between now and Nov. 13, our last edition before election day. We cannot guarantee that a letter writer submitting multiple letters will be published more than once, or that a letter will be published in a particular issue.
Fact checking is important to us. If you state a fact, state your source. The onus will be on the writer in this case, and if a letter is time consuming to verify, it will be returned or bumped to the next edition, or later. As usual, we will edit for matters pertaining to legal issues, taste, personal attacks, etc.
If you are a candidate, considering candidacy or you are volunteering on a campaign, we expect you will be up front about that with our readers in your letter to the editor.
Issue-related letters to the editor will take precedence over letters about specific candidates. Precedence will also be given to letters only submitted to The NEWS for publication.
It’s our hope our letters pages can continue to be a place for healthy debate in Parksville Qualicum Beach.
— John Harding is the editor of The NEWS. E-mail: editor@pqbnews.com.
