Wednesday, June 19, 2002

The Citizen Election Forum is open for you

This election year, as in past cycles, The Citizen is keeping its Letters to the Editor section open to local political candidates and their supporters.

Unlike many newspapers, which routinely forbid political candidates from making use of the free letters pages, The Citizen explicitly invites and encourages freewheeling political debate and discussion in our letters.

We believe that policy is in keeping with our mission of providing a public forum on these pages where issues may be discussed openly, in the marketplace of ideas.

Thus, we welcome your letters in support of or in opposition to local candidates and issues.

To insure fairness and to prevent "ballot-box stuffing," there are a few ground rules. Space is always a limiting factor. Within the space allotted for letters:

1. We will print letters from candidates in preference to letters from supporters.

2. We will edit for brevity, clarity and matters of taste.

3. We will try to insure balance with a degree of proportionality, but if letters are few we will print what we have on hand. In other words, if we have a letter from candidate A but do not have one from candidate B, we will still print candidate A's letter that week.

4. When there's an abundance of letters for or against one candidate, we will choose the most interesting, the most cogent, the most relevant, the most concise, etc. In other words, we will do the job of an editor. Thus, not every letter for every candidate will be printed.

5. For the last paper before the election, only those letters that do not introduce new issues or previously unprinted charges will be published. Letters responding to issues raised in previous weeks will be published. We want to prevent last-minute surprises that give no opportunity for response.

We look forward to this public election forum in our letters pages.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page