The Sunday Times-News is changing to put our community's opinions, issues in the spotlight
Page through Sunday's Erie Times-News or e-edition and a few changes will catch your eye.
The City & Region report in Section B has moved, replaced by opinion pages labeled The Commons.
Local news has been moved inside Section A from its longtime placement in B.
The Nation & World report has been moved to Section B from its usual placement in Section A.
More: Now you can find even more in the Erie Times-News e-edition. Here's how
In short, we shuffled the Sunday deck but haven't eliminated the features you're accustomed to, and in fact can now add to the number of local voices in the Sunday opinion pages — and beyond.
Lifting opinion-based work — especially yours — into the spotlight is the motivating force behind all the changes.
For the past couple of years, topics and voices from around the state have had equal billing with local voices in our Viewpoints pages. We've seen great interest from readers in some of those guest columns or editorials — and utter disinterest in many others.
Unsurprisingly, when we publish informed, reasoned local opinion, the math flips; greater interest in many of the viewpoints, whether from the Times-News staff or recruited or submitted from the community or around local issues.
We're committed to returning the bulk of our efforts around opinion to addressing local issues and raising local voices. Pieces of how we'll go about that will be new, to us and to readers.
In print, you'll see three and sometimes four opinion pages at the front of Section B each Sunday. Starting the section with opinion should signal our understanding of its value as well as our commitment to raising the level and visibility of conversation around our community's most critical issues.
You have opinions and ideas, and your thoughtful letters are invited and appreciated. Email your letters to letters@timesnews.com and include your name and the municipality where you live. Please keep letters to 250 words — shorter is even better — and limit submissions to no more than one every 30 days. Submitting a letter doesn't guarantee that it will be published. Submitting a chain or mass-distributed letter guarantees it won't.
At times we'll put out invitations for your opinions around select topics in order to share some of the community's thoughts on those matters.
Letters, as well as the guest columns we accept and recruit, will meet the same guidelines that steer our own work; accuracy, truthfulness, fairness and respect. Defamatory, threatening, degrading or dehumanizing language and disinformation is disqualifying.
Letters may or may not appear weekly. There's just Lisa Thompson Sayers, our opinion and engagement editor, with occasional help from me when it comes to selecting, editing, packaging, proofing and getting those letters published. It's time-consuming, and there will be weeks where that finite time has to go to other needs.
Staff profile: Meet Lisa Thompson Sayers of the Erie Times-News and GoErie.com
In the guest columns we receive or recruit, unsupported opinion and hot-takes are out, and fact-based analyses, first-person experiences and proposals for solutions are in. We're not going to avoid difficult topics or debates; we'll encourage a higher quality of conversation around them.
We'll seek out and raise voices from historically marginalized communities that too few of us have heard, on issues familiar and new. Who gets heard gets noticed; who gets heard drives understanding and change. Erie County is a big table, and there's a seat for all.
The Times-News staff will offer context- and analysis-rich columns, Q&As and other story forms, some for subscribers only. Editorials, once the centerpiece of opinion sections, will be rare in our pages, though you might find shorter editorial board-endorsed positions on GoErie.com during major moments.
None of that should suggest the watchdog's asleep. Accountability trumps all for every journalist in our newsroom.
It's not just print where we'll spend our time. We'll resume what had been regular and invaluable meetings with community groups and other neighbors, some on the record, some off. We'll plan for community events, some large, some small, some private. We were getting quite good at this before the 2020 calendar turned to March. Two-and-a-half years later, there are some connections to rebuild, some rust to shake off, some new acquaintances to make. If your group would like to have coffee or otherwise get together to talk, please email Lisa at lthompson@timesnews.com. We'll see what we can arrange.
We'll also use a lot of other means available to us to gather and share ideas. Think live and produced videos, online chats, podcasts, interactive graphics, photos, Instagram and Twitter. We'll go where our community is, and that's not a single location, page or channel.
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We've reordered two sections to make this happen. Navigating the Sunday pages will be slightly different, but not difficult. All of the local news that had been in the former City & Region section is now in A, followed by state and mostly regional reports from our sister USA TODAY NETWORK newsrooms, The Associated Press and other trusted sources. The new B section starts with The Commons opinion pages, followed by Nation & World news, obituaries and the weather.
This evolution is happening in real-time. Some of the things we mean to do we're still learning how to pull off. Stick with us as we find our stride.
We're eager to learn from you in real-time as well. Email me or Lisa with your thoughts about the changes over the coming weeks — what you like, what you don't, what you want to see more of or know more about. We chose The Commons as the new name of our opinion effort because among the ancient term's many definitions is a central agreement: a resource that belongs to all. We'll aim for a mix of voices and ideas as diverse as the community we all share and care about. I hope yours can be part of it.
Staff profile: Meet Matt Martin of the Erie Times-News and GoErie.com
Matt Martin is the executive editor of the Erie Times-News and the USA Today Network's Western Pennsylvania Region. He can be reached at mmartin@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Local voices, issues at heart of changes to Sunday Erie Times-News
