Expressingyourself

In addition to providing community news and features, a newspaper also serves as a voice for the community through editorials, columns and letters to the editor.

Editorials have ranged from election topics to a way a government board has handled business to congratulation to an organization or person for a job well done such as for individuals or for the Greenwave teams that have won state titles over the years.

This election cycle has been vibrant so far with more than four months to go at both the state and federal levels.

On many occasions, editorials arouse interest and discussion, especially from differing viewpoints. We definitely don’t live in a community where there is just one viewpoint.

Likewise, a letter to the editor is another forum to allow readers to express their viewpoints on a wide range of topics.

In June, one of our letter writers challenged members of the community to write a letter to the editor to share their feelings or to comment on a particular topic of interest. In his letter, he found it disheartening that more people do not write a letter to express their feelings.

On occasions, we will have a writer send us a personal email complaining about one of our columnists; however, the reader does not want us to publish his letter because it was addressed to the editor. This is a classic letter to the editor, however, because the reader had concerns about the columnist’s logic and offered a well-developed opposing viewpoint.

We experience the range of letters from readers being upset with a columnist — both conservative and liberal — to policies being enacted by either the state or federal government. In other newspapers, gun laws or background checks are hot topics as is land issues between the Bureau of Land Management and local governments in in the West.

The LVN has consistently published ways for you to contact us with letters to the editor, and we plan to take it one step further:

We want to continue to increase the number of letter writers to our Perspective pages on Wednesday.

For this quarter that ends in September, we will take the names of our letter writers, throw them into a big bowl and draw out a name for a gift certificate for lunch at one of Fallon’s restaurants.

When sending a letter, ensure the content is accurate and fair-minded. The First Amendment does not offer protection for libel.

We have several letters in today’s issue, and we hope to see more next week. Send your letters to lahontanvalleynews.com and include your name and phone number.

Editorials written by the LVN Editorial Board appear on Wednesdays.