Six days per week, the top right-hand section of the Opinion page in The Citizen is occupied by the editorial, an commentary piece written on behalf of the newspaper under the label “Our View.”

Like hundreds of newspapers across the country, The Citizen provides these pieces to give reader's the newspaper editorial board's thoughts on issues in the news. The opinions are formed independently of the reporters who gather news and strive to write objective, balanced articles.

Because the editorials are opinion pieces and labeled as such, most readers understand that editorials are going to take a stance on the issue at hand. We still get calls, though, from the occasional reader who cannot believe we would write such a one-sided article.

This week a reader was upset that our Sunday editorial praised Gov. David Paterson for forcing state senators into special session while it blasted the senators for refusing to meet as a full body and take meaningful votes on legislation.

The caller said we should now write an editorial that takes the side of the senators.

But if we did that, it would defeat the purpose of offering an editorial, which is to provide an opinion.

That does not mean we wouldn't publish other opinions that oppose our editorial. A letter to the editor defending the senators and blasting the governor would certainly be published, as would a piece by one of our columnists.

The broad goal for the opinion page is to provide a wide marketplace of ideas, and the “Our View” piece is just one segment of that.

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Last week, I asked for reader thought on our comics/advice page, and did you ever respond.

What seemed clear from the column feedback is that despite the recommendation from a sales representative who had stopped in our office earlier this month, readers do not want us to drop For Better or for Worse or Beetle Bailey.

A few comic strips did come up repeatedly as ones those callers thought we should oust. Those included Pardon My Planet, Six Chix and Get Fuzzy.

So I throw it back to the readers. Are there defenders of those strips out there?

Let's keep the conversation going.

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