This year is an election year. With every election comes the desire to voice views on political issues. As Sedona’s only newspaper and the largest news outlet in the Verde Valley, we’ve had long standing policies about how to handle letters to the editor regarding campaigns, elections issues, ballot propositions and candidates.
Firstly, if you want to voice support for a candidate or issue, you can always do so with a paid political ad. These are guaranteed to be published because you’re paying for us to do so. They can be large or small, color or black and white and state what you want to say. Contact our Advertising Department and General Manager Kyle Larson at (928) 282-7795 Ext. 114 or klarson@larsonnewspapers.com to purchase a political ad.
Political advertisements require the purchaser to put “Paid for by …” at the very bottom of the ad so everyone reading the paper knows exactly who is funding the advertising.
Letters to the editor, conversely, go into the general letters queue and are published in the order they are received— generally, depending on space. Like all letters, they are limited to 300 words.
If you want to criticize the actions of an active elected official — president, governor, member of
Congress, state official, county supervisor, Sedona City Council member — that’s always fair game.
Officials have to serve the public and deserve criticism whether it’s an election year or not.
The primary election this year is Tuesday, Aug. 2. Wednesday, July 6, is the first day to vote early in person and the day when early ballots get mailed out. Thus, the last edition for letters regarding local election issues is Friday, July 1, so letters must be sent by the deadline of Monday, June 27.
This only affects letters to the editor — anyone can still buy a political ad after this date and up to election day itself.
That said, between now and then, letter writers can send us letters about issues that specifically relates to ballot issues — such as Home Rule, which will be on the Sedona ballot this year — or state, county or local ballot propositions, should there be any.
After the candidate filing deadline on Monday, April 4, we notify local candidates about our letters to the editor and elections policies when we begin discussing how we will cover their campaigns. Depending on the seat, we do profile stories, candidate-written essays, or both, and try to make page placement equitable.
We do not run any letters for or against any local candidates out of fairness. If we run one letter supporting one candidate, we would be on the hook to run one equal-length letter for every other candidate. In a multi-seat race like Sedona City Council, this could get messy especially if one candidate gets 10 letters and other candidate gets zero.
But again, if you want to support a specific candidate, contact our advertising department and they’ll be happy to help you.
By the time election day rolls out around, our policies have been set for months and at the same from year to year. Despite all this, some candidates’ followers are not passed on our guidelines by the candidates themselves, who then think we are being “unfair” by not running their candidate’s hagiographies or lambasts of competitors.
Side note: The candidates who complain the most about our fairness being unfair tend to be the ones who lose by the widest margins — there’s something to that which has nothing to do with us and our coverage.
The same rules apply for political letters as they do for general letters to the editor: No longer than 300 words, no personal attacks, authors must include their name, phone number and home address. If there are any numbers or hard facts [i.e., “Proposition 101 will raise taxes 1.45%”], they must be validated with either a document, a link, or something independently verifiable. If it’s just an opinion [i.e., “Proposition 101 will raise taxes, which are bad”], then that’s fine.
We prefer letters sent by email, so we don’t have to retype them. Send them to me at editor@larsonnewspapers.com, or mail them to 298
Van Deren, Sedona AZ, 86339 or drop them off at our newsroom in Uptown.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
