We want to let our readers know that we truly value their opinions and could not function without them. That’s why we apologize for the frustration many of you felt when we abruptly made a change in how we collect answers for our popular weekly feature Q-Line, which is intended to provide an outlet for our readers who may not feel comfortable letting loose in a letter to the editor and would prefer to remain anonymous. Let us assure you, that is still our goal and we will honor confidentiality now that we have asked respondents to use e-mails instead of leaving voice mail messages. E-mail addresses and names will not be printed and you can trust that we will not burn our sources.
We made the change because we want to be more accurate. Sometimes callers would mumble or the reception was fuzzy and that led us to cut out portions of people’s comments or, in rare cases, print something that wasn’t accurate. With e-mails, there is no ambiguity. We know there are some who still do not have computers because they cannot afford them or they are afraid of technology. We have set up a new voicemail account for those folks to call in. However, we hope this change will encourage people to tackle the Internet. Contact City Hall to find out which libraries offer computer courses and take advantage. We hope our readers will continue to participate. We get a kick out of the responses and we hope our readers do, too.
