A big goal for this column, since I started writing it roughly 18 months ago, was to remove the mystery surrounding the way a daily newspaper is produced. I've written about policy, strategy and decision-making - many times in reaction to feedback from readers about specific articles they saw in the paper.

I think readers have appreciated the information, even if they haven't agreed with what I've said, because at the very least it gave them an explanation as to why we did something.

But lately, as time has marched on week after week, I've heard some of the same comments and questions that past columns had attempted to address.

Rather than simply republish columns from the past, I'll use this space occasionally to quickly revisit past column topics that have resurfaced.

One such topic is the newspaper's policy regarding editorials, those opinion pieces that run under the “Our View” heading six times per week. (On Saturdays, we run a couple of editorial excepts from other newspapers to give readers a sense of what publications elsewhere are saying.)

A few weeks ago, we published a letter from a writer who strongly disagreed with one of our editorials, and the writer put emphasis on the fact that our editorials are not signed by anyone.

The reason for not using a name is because the editorial is not one person's opinion. The editorial is the official opinion of the newspaper, formulated by the members of the paper's editorial board, which includes publisher Rick Emanuel, managing editor Mike Dowd and me. All three of us have written these pieces, but in almost every case, the writer is incorporating the input of the other board members.

We're not trying to be secretive about who writes our editorials. If people want to find out who the actual writer of one of the pieces was, they can call me up and I'll tell them. But I'll also stress that the article was written on behalf of the newspaper, so any beef they have with it is with the newspaper, not the individual.

Some people have said we should not be printing any editorials, but we feel it's part of our job to offer an opinion on the issues that appear on the news pages. And we make sure that opinion stays on the opinion page. We keep our reporters out of the process of opinion-forming because we don't want to compromise their job, which is to gather the facts and present the arguments of all sides of an issue as best as they can.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net