Letters are not about balance but about voice

The good news is that many people read this page.

The not so good news is that I have been getting many complaints about Wednesday’s issue.

The complaints have been about the number of Jim Patterson letters printed on this page.

One woman said that the letters about the candidates should be one for one. I do certainly aim to do that when I have enough letters to run them one for one. I have been trying to balance out the letters with letters on different topics, but I was faced on Wednesday with having a high number of pro-Patterson letters.

My choice was to run what I had or have empty space and not run the letters submitted, only because I didn’t have enough letters to counter them.

I don’t think that is fair either.

I do want to have a balanced page, so I am going to solicit letters: Tell me what you think. Do you support a particular candidate for office? Why? What do you think about some of the issues on the June 5 ballot? What do you think about the decisions made at Tuesday’s Atascadero City Council meeting? What is your pet peeve that you see in our city? What good things have you seen out in our community?

I want to hear from everyone, not just one group of citizens, and that goes for any subject, not just the issue of running too many or not enough letters for a particular candidate.

If you see a large number of letters on a topic you disagree with, know that the reason there aren’t a lot — or any — letters on the other side is not because that is the personal view of the paper or any staff member, but that’s what I’ve received. While the number of letters I’ve received recently have increased, most of those have been about Debbie Arnold or Jim Patterson. The letters that I did not publish on Wednesday because of space limitations were all pro-Jim Patterson letters.

Please submit your letter to editor@atascaderonews.com.

For the complete article see the 05-25-2012 issue.

Click here to purchase an electronic version of the 05-25-2012 paper.