Whatever your background, our new SC Opinion Editor welcomes your views
First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room.
I am not from South Carolina, but I am the daughter of a U.S. Army veteran (AKA a military brat), so I learned at an early age to appreciate moving to new locales, meeting new people and calling new places my home.
My elementary school days included time spent at Schofield Barracks, Oahu, middle school at Fort Hood, Texas (which included my first foray into journalism on the school paper), and all four years of high school in Neu-Ulm, Germany. Adapting is in the blood.
South Carolina is home now.
With that in mind, the opinion content of The State, The Beaufort Gazette, The Island Packet and The Sun News should be focused on what matters to the more than 5.1 million other people, according to the Census Bureau’s 2020 count, who also call the Palmetto State home.
In an ideal world, all 5.1 million would be able to attend every school board and city council meeting, to stay abreast of the latest breaking news and have hours each day to monitor their elected officials and pore over tons of public documents. The world isn’t quite ideal, just yet, so in the meantime our talented reporters and editors work hard to cover your communities for you and keep you informed.
The opinion pages are the places to share your concerns, learn from others, hear differing points of view and evaluate how all of that information will affect you. I have long believed editorial pages are prime real estate in the journalism world. Here, we can urge you and your elected leaders to act, encourage our neighbors to pay attention to the world around them and get beyond our personal bubbles.
All 5.1 million of us have different life experiences, family backgrounds, religious beliefs, political views, racial and ethnic identities, levels of education and income, but at the end of the day we all call this place home.
As your new Opinion Editor, I want our opinion content to be lively and diverse. That means I encourage all of you to participate.
We will have disagreements, as we should, but let’s debate and discuss rationally armed with the facts.
The facts are key.
While these are the opinion pages, the facts should not be in dispute. They can be sourced, referenced and agreed upon, whatever our personal opinions.
The distinction between opinion content and the rest of any newspaper is the ability to use the agreed upon facts to persuade, dissuade and otherwise steer conversations and actions.
You can comment on our social media feeds and use these links to share your thoughts with us and your community.
Please leave your thoughts here, or submit a letter to the editor.
Whatever method you choose, I urge you to join the conversation.
This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 10:12 AM.
