News-Record.com

Some recent questions from our readers:

I know the N&R's goal is to move toward local news and issues. But don't you think coverage of this Jenks Crayton thing is a bit of overkill? I mean, almost all the letters published are saying the same thing about the same issue. Please, enough already. It's as old as the election blurbs after hearing them fifty times.

That's a fair question. We ran the letters as a reflection not only the sentiment of the respective writers but as a gauge of the intensity of the public reaction to the issue. One letter might have summed up all those feelings just fine, but not the ground swell of discontent with some commissioners regarding their behavior during this episode. We do, however, cut off letters on a single issue when we believe the discussion has run its course.

Why is there censorship of the letters forum? While I think listing those words was in bad taste, I am an adult and if something is offensive to me, I can certainly scroll past it. I found Michael's arrogant, patronizing and condescending attitude far more offensive than Bigmouth's words. At least Bigmouth did not direct his vulgarity at an individual.

If you're confused by this one, let me provide some context: This question regards a comment thread on the letters to the editor blog in which we deleted a comment that contained objectionable language. That prompted another commenter to post a long list of objectionable words, a la George Carlin. We deleted that one, too, simply because we will not run profanity in the newspaper or on our Web site.

Those words (which included the s-word, the f-word and the n-word) may not offend some adults but they would others. And while adults comprise our largest readership segment, younger people do read the paper, especially online.

We would expect commenters who often criticize the civility of our elected officials to please be civil themselves. You can express yourselves fully and freely without resorting to gutter language or meanness.

How come you decided to publish what seemed to be "pro-Jenks" letters in today's newspaper (after the commish meeting) and not before? Seriously -- this is curiosity about the editorial process. It's not an indictment or complaint and I'm not asking for anyone but myself. No one's "asked me to ask you."

We try to publish letters in as timely a fashion as possible but most of the Crayton letters arrived this week. Add to that the time it takes to contact people to verify their letters, and we got them in as soon as we could.

Ideally, they would have run sooner. We even mark letters for "fast-track" consideration when they are time-sensitive. But in this case we got them in as soon as we humanly could. We do still believe they served a purpose by reflecting public sentiment.

Thanks for the good questions and please keep them coming.