The Summerland Advocate-Messenger - Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community

What is the difference between news and opinion?

This, friends, is the question of the week.

In last week's issue, I explained how SAM began a partnership with Trusting News, a project of the Reynolds Journalism Institute and American Press Institute.

We worked to devise strategies that promote responsible and ethical journalism.

One goal I established, through the project, is to provide a breakdown of what makes a news article, an editorial and a column.

In the Advocate-Messenger, opinion and editorial pieces appear on Page 2. It should be easy to tell the Page includes editorial content because we label it as such.

In large news organizations, the main editorial is often penned by the publisher or is a combined effort of the paper's editorial board. An editorial may be about a current event, but it offers an opinion based on facts.

While I write a weekly column, SAM typically does not publish an editorial. With a community newspaper, I don't have the luxury of only writing opinion pieces. Where does my opinion show up weekly in SAM? Page two, in my column, titled, -Isms: Views on life in rural America. More on column writing will appear in next week's paper. Every other article I write appears on news pages. I write feature articles, provide meeting coverage or gather straight news.

Each week, we include a poll question, which is posted on Facebook on Mondays. Results from the previous week's poll is also included.

Some weeks, we run an op-ed, an opinion piece submitted for publication. The author is not an employee of the paper but a member of the community. This week, the op-ed comes from Nebraska Community Foundation Director Jeff Yost.

Why do we include an op-ed? First, the topic can be about anything. Second, it offers another viewpoint. I see an op-ed as a think piece, a call to action ... and sometimes, it serves as a wakeup call.

Weekly, we bring a guest opinion from the Center for Rural Affairs. Why? CFRA staff members provide a strong voice for rural America, whether it be championing a new business or dissecting policy and how it affects us. I believe that is an important service we all can learn from.

SAM accepts letters to the editor and our policy is printed, permitting room is available, on Page 2.

Letters to the editor must contain a signature and be 300 words or less. If a letter surpasses the noted word count, we ask the author to trim the word count or pay our regular per column inch advertising rate, for more than 300 words.

Letters to the editor are printed at no charge, except for letters touting political candidates. Those letters are charged a flat fee.

Letters may be submitted via mail, dropped off at our office in Clearwater or emailed, along with a verifiable signature, via email.

We also include reader feedback, which we pull from our website and social media channels. Not all readers of the print edition use social media, so this gives those readers a glimpse at responses received online.

A staff box, which includes names of employees, our business address and mailing information, is included on the bottom left hand corner of the editorial Page.

Sometimes, like during National Newspaper Week, we included an editorial cartoon. The goal of the artwork is simple: make readers think about current events through verbal and visual cues. Editorial cartoons often use elements like exaggeration, symbolism, labels, irony and analogies. A solid editorial cartoon offers analysis of a situation or person.

Joseph Pulitzer said, "What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial Page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!"

We, at the Advocate-Messenger, agree.

I said it last week and it bears repeating: The bottom line: We believe in transparency and will continue to work toward our goals set as part of the TN project.