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Category: Editorials Editorials
Published: 13 February 2017 13 February 2017

By Mary Alice Murphy

As my first mentor, Dean Thompson, then the editor of the Silver City Daily Press when I worked there, and now the sports editor of the SCDP, said more than once: "I must be doing something right. One phone call has someone calling me a (expletive deleted) (homophobic description deleted) because we're too conservative. The next one has someone calling me a (expletive deleted) (homophobic description deleted) because we're too liberal."

The Beat strives to be balanced. I received a "shame on you" email, because something that was posted was considered too conservative and attacking by the reader. He must not have noticed that mere minutes before that item was posted, a quite liberal position that was anti-2nd amendment was posted. And both came from other sources, not the Beat.

Often a phone call or email will be asking the Beat to please cover something that will present a single political viewpoint. I usually say: "I won't, because I don't have time to cover everything from every viewpoint." Sometimes, they are newsworthy enough that one of us will cover it.

You, as a Beat reader, may have noticed that many articles on the front page have bylines. Beat freelancers and I, the editor, write those. We strive to be as factual and accurate as humanly possible.

The vast majority of items posted to local news releases, sports, obituaries, non-local news releases, community news, New Mexico legislative session 2017, and other pages of the Beat are submitted by email and posted as written.

Unlike other news sources, such as print newspapers, which may rewrite these news releases, we don't. We may edit them for grammar and spelling, but usually do not rewrite them.

The only time you will see another byline on an item is if we have received permission to republish an item from another publication, and therefore give full attribution to the author and source.

If an item offends you, don't read it. If you don't like a columnist's viewpoint, don't read it.

However, if you find an error in an article written by one of us, please let us know, so we can correct it.

I certainly don't read everything in paper newspapers, so why should you read everything in a digital one?