Published: September 06, 2008 10:44 pm         

Candidates welcome to participate

A reader dropped me a card this week asking a simple question.

“Should not Gordon Southern be paying for political ads instead of using the Public Forum for his campaign?” he asked.

For those who don’t know, Southern is a Democratic candidate for county council, and he is a frequent contributor to the Public Forum.

Just for the record, we’ll never discourage a political candidate from buying an advertisement. We need advertising to pay the bills.

To be honest, though, I’m not sure it’s fair to say that Southern is using the Public Forum for his campaign. He was a frequent letter writer before he filed for office, and he’s been a frequent letter writer since.

And the bottom line here is that the Public Forum is open to anyone, candidate or non-candidate.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen letters from other candidates, and I hope we’ll see more in the weeks to come. We’ve also seen letters from readers supporting one candidate or another and encouraging other readers to follow their lead. I’d like to see more of those letters, too.

That, folks, is what the Public Forum is all about. It’s intended as a way for the community to discuss issues of public importance, and an election certainly qualifies.

We do have some rules.

We’ll publish no more than one letter from a given writer in any one week. We also reserve the right to edit letters for length. Anything longer than 400 words is subject to shortening.

Longer letters we’ll sometimes consider for guest columns, but we can’t entertain guest columns from every candidate for public office. We simply don’t have the space.

Thus, we’re asking candidates to limit their offerings to 400 words or less.

Some newspapers set an even shorter length limit for political letters, but so far, we haven’t been forced to consider that.

Our goal always will be to publish a wide array of opinions from our readers, and if we ever get to the point where we have more letters than space to print them, we’ll look at shortening letters before we look at limiting the number we print.

There are other reasons that a letter might not be printed, of course.

First, we need the name, address and telephone number of the writer. If we don’t have that, we can’t print the letter.

Second, we won’t publish consumer complaints. If you have a beef with a business, this isn’t the place to take it.

Third, we won’t print libel. If you write a letter defaming someone’s character, the chances are it won’t see the light of day.

Finally, the letter needs to address an issue of public interest. If you’re mad because your kid’s coach won’t put him in the game, that’s probably not a matter for the Public Forum. If you’re having a fight with your neighbor over a barking dog, that’s also not an issue for the Public Forum.

But if you want to comment on the behavior of coaches in general or about barking dogs in particular, then by all means have at it.

In the end, the Public Forum is about what readers want it to be about. It’s your forum. Send us a letter.

Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at (574) 732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com