Forum Editorial: Introducing ‘Socially Speaking’

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We’ve appreciated the lively letters to the editor over the past few weeks. We believe an opinion section of a hometown newspaper should be a vibrant local forum of viewpoints and debate.

As part of our ever-evolving mission to serve that purpose for our community, we’re introducing this week a new feature of the opinion pages called Socially Speaking.

While we think letters to the editor are one of the most effective and important ways to spark civil debate and engagement in our community, the opinion pages of a local newspaper are no longer the primary way to get your opinions out there to the public. Instead, most people take to social media to circulate their thoughts, for better or worse.

We’ve decided to combine the best of both worlds with Speaking Socially. Each week (or thereabouts), we’ll select a comment or two from our social media pages and highlight them in Speaking Socially in the newspaper. We’ll credit the commenter by their name on the social media platform they made the comment on, and it will appear much like a letter to the editor.

We think this will help further enhance what you can find on our opinion pages, and most importantly, we believe it will help thoughtful opinions reach more people than just your immediate social circle.

As we continue to navigate new technological waters that have changed the way we communicate, we’ll continue to adapt our product as best we can to meet the moment, all in service of fulfilling our mission of being the Maryville Forum.