Tim Trainor

Welcome to an expanded Redmond Spokesman. One of our added features is a reinvigorated and reimagined opinion section for the newspaper and its website.

The full-page, ad-free section will appear on Tuesdays in print and will be updated throughout the week at redmondspokesman.com/opinion.

Mostly, we want to turn over this space to you. The goal is for this page to be a place where you can speak your mind on issues and life in our city, as well as publish your response to issues that you read about in the paper.

We’re also looking for consistent columnists. If you, or someone you know, has a great turn of phrase and can write their way out of a paper bag, we’d be interested in chatting with them to publish their work on a monthly or quarterly basis. We’d love to have folks from a wide variety of backgrounds — retirees, farmers, teachers, students, rock climbers, rafters, painters, entrepreneurs and clergy members. The whole gambit of Central Oregon life.

We will publish our own opinion at times, when we’ve got an interesting take on something. When that is the case, it will be written by and representing our local interests. Though we are part of a statewide media company, we want the Spokesman’s editorial stance to be independent and unique.

If you have interest in joining a community editorial board, which meets regularly to talk through local issues and opine on them, email me at ttrainor@redmondspokesman.com. That’s something we plan to build out and facilitate while we get our feet underneath us.

We want this to be a different experience than social media, however. There the guardrail-less experience of debate and opining turns into a free for all of invective and misinformation. We want this to be a place for respectful disagreement that helps elucidate solutions — not an endless bashing back and forth by warring factions.

So how can you contribute to this new section?

Write a letter to the editor

We always welcome your letters, but we do have some rules. We’re a local newspaper and we want to be sure letters have a local focus. The Spokesman has no impact on life in D.C. (and darn little in Salem), but your perspective and opinion, published here, can make a difference in our community.

Those letters should be limited to one focus, contain no more than 300 words and include the writer’s signature, phone number and address for verification. Your address and phone number will not be published, but we will call to make sure you are who you say you are.

We edit letters for brevity, grammar, taste and legal reasons. We reject poetry, personal attacks, form letters, letters submitted elsewhere and those appropriate for other sections of the newspapers. We also limit writers to one letter or guest column every 30 days. We will stop printing endorsement letters two weeks prior to any election date.

Guest columns policy

Maybe you’ve got more to say than can fit in 300 words. Great! Though, of course, as an editor, I know the power of brevity.

But we do welcome guest columns, which allow authors with special knowledge of a subject a little more space to communicate their ideas. Submissions should be between 600 and 800 words and, again, must be signed and include the writer’s phone number and address for verification. Submissions will be edited for the same reasons as letters.

Local, local

I love the opinion sections in most local papers. Whenever I’m traveling, I always pick up the most recent edition and I often flip right to the letters to the editor. It’s always fun and enlightening to see what readers care about — and see what they think is missing from community discussion or local coverage.

Hopefully we can create something on those lines in the Spokesman, and we plan to set aside enough space for you to tell your own stories.