Welcome to YOUR new opinion page

This week we are launching a revamped opinion page, bringing you a more diverse selection of commentary from around the country and from right here in Utah.
We are also asking you to join a conversation. Each week we will pose a question on this page and you can reply either to me directly via email (editor@sunad.com) or join others in answering via this newspaper’s social media channels, Twitter and Facebook.
I am a big believer that engaging each other in healthy debate is how great ideas rise to the surface and how bad ideas find themselves relegated to the dustbin. This country’s founding fathers figured as much as well.
Too often these days, each of us chooses only to hear what we want to hear, tuning out any opinions we might disagree with. Tuning out is a cop out. It’s cowardice, and I would say an abrogation of your duty as a citizen—that whole “We the People” self-governance idea means you, yes you, have a seat at the table. What good is that seat if you sit by yourself inside an echo chamber of your own making?
Again, the reason there is a free press in the United States is because the founding fathers strongly believed that only an informed citizenry, exposed to a market place of varying ideals and perspectives, could most effectively govern itself. That doesn’t just mean in Washington or New York or Salt Lake. That means right here. Right now.
With that in mind, I wish to invite you to the conversation. Write a letter to the editor. Write an opinion column. Engage with us on social media. Don’t just disagree, grumble or cancel your subscription because you think Steve Christensen is Karl Marx incarnate.
This is an OPINION page. We want you to share your opinion. In fact, this is YOUR page. If you won’t fill it, then Mr. Christensen will. Or Nathaniel Woodward will. Or myself.
Speaking of myself, I will occasionally contribute an editorial in this space. I’m reluctant to do it every week. For one, I find myself very busy trying to report the news for you. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of transitioning this newspaper into a more streamlined look, with new content (see the back page for example.)
Plus, too often, people misunderstand the difference between NEWS and OPINION. And I don’t like my news reporting to be taken differently simply because you might find my opinion on a particular subject disagreeable. But there are times where I will feel the need to weigh in on a subject apart from covering it in the news pages. Please feel free to engage with me. Disagree or agree with me. Write letters. Opine.
That’s what this page is for.
— Matt Ward