“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”

– John Locke

As I was reading the Sept. 26 Daily, I noticed a letter to the editor with the headline, “Sick of Daily’s liberal bias.”

In the letter, Nate Headrick, senior in history, wrote that he is “sick of the spin and outright lies of the Daily” and the paper needs to “try to get someone in the paper that actually disagrees with all the writers and give the other students someone they can relate to and someone who will tell the whole story.”

This isn’t the first letter I’ve read in Daily’s opinion pages with this theme; we’re always hearing about the “liberal bias” in our stories.

So, I thought I’d start off this week by attempting to explain the difference between the opinion pages of the paper and the actual news.

Here we go.

The opinion and news sections of the Daily are two entirely different entities with different editors and editorial objectives.

For example, our news reporters are paid to write down other people’s opinions when they use them as sources in news stories.

Our columnists are paid to write their own. The information included in these columns is not any less true than information found in a straight news story, but the columnist researches it as a way to support their argument.

It is not necessarily fair, but it isn’t supposed to be.What struck me about Headrick’s letter was his comment about including more columnists students can relate to. In previous columns I’ve said a newspaper should reflect the community it serves. I’ve also said a newspaper’s first responsibility is to provide readers with pertinent information.

These are two factors which are important for both news stories and opinion columns. They should reflect their community and include pertinent information.

But unlike reporting, which can hold to a pretty straightforward and formulaic style of writing, column writing has an added dimension to consider. Editorial space is valuable, and not just anyone has the chance to fill it with their personal thoughts and feelings.

When I asked him how he goes about deciding who will be the Daily’s columnists, Opinion Editor Tim Paluch said it comes down to two skills.

“It makes no difference their ideology,” he said. “I only look at their writing style and their ability to convey their opinions on paper.”

Basically, there is no quota on the number of “conservative” or “liberal” columnists in the paper. We don’t search out or actively recruit people because they have the opinion we’re looking for. The only requirement is an ability to express themselves clearly and logically with the written word.

And just as the Daily doesn’t select its information based on what our readers might want to hear, we don’t select our columnists based on what we think the majority of campus claims as their ideology.

Maybe the majority of ISU students do not relate to the columnists in the Daily, maybe our opinion pages are more liberal than most would expect from a college campus in the middle of Iowa.

Or maybe we are fulfilling our role as a newspaper – providing readers with pertinent information and ideas. The majority of readers may not agree with the Daily’s columnists, but at least they are discussing and debating the ideas presented to them instead of blindly following the majority.

If the Daily is going to serve the ISU community well, it needs to provide a forum for everyone’s opinion, whether it’s a column or a letter to the editor.

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is editor in chief of the Daily.