The big wave going through the avant-garde world of Internet publishing these days is the old but suddenly newly found idea of publishing readers' writings on everything from a child's football game to latest happenings in a community. It already exists right here, on these pages.
Newspapers have published letters from its readers for decades. Most edit the content, sometimes reducing a long letter to a few central phrases. Other letter editors chose one or two of a stack of comments from readers on a subject and chuck the remainder.
Newspapers also open Op-Ed pages to outside writers, usually a person highly knowledgeable in a topic.
The West Seattle Herald and the White Center News say, "Anyone can write it and we will print it and put it on the papers' Web-site."
In this week's newspaper, we have eight such examples of information written by citizens of our community. Six are included in Letters and, true to our policy, are exactly as the writer wrote them with some corrections for style (i.e., "4" becomes "four" or an acronym is spelled out for clarity).
The other two are part of something we are particularly proud of because it means people not only read our newspaper or are some of the thousands who check out our new and evolving Website (www.westseattleherald.com or www.whitecenternews.com ).
As an outgrowth of a letter writing fury, Ann McClary has written an excellent piece (on this page) on how to get merchants in the Junction - or anywhere - to seriously consider donating to your kid's school auction or your organization's fund raising function. She understands what too many either don't get or don't remember, that merchants have a limited amount of profit margin to donate to all of the causes that come through the door.
The other piece is on Page One about how one reader began using the services of columnist and physical trainer Annette Herrick and the fantastic changes it made in her life and her health.
Read them both and when you feel you have something you want to share with our readers, send us an e-mail (or a letter if you are e-mail-less).
We stand ready to be your publisher.
