All the praise and scorn could be yours

Call this a help-wanted ad; I would prefer to call it an opportunity. An opportunity for your voice to be heard beyond the loud continued noise of discourse.

Yes, you have the opportunity to become the Boulder City Review’s fourth rotating columnist.

I am seeking a local resident to fill the slot to the right, where you see Rose Ann Miele this week, that will be vacated by retiring columnist Carolyn Schneider.

Schneider, whose Senior Class column has run since early 2010, has decided to stop writing her column.

That means there is an opening once a month for a new local talent to be heard.

Here is how the system works, in case you haven’t been following the paper for a while. Every week we have a column by your’s truly, Northern Nevada journalist Dennis Myers, right-leaning Chuck Muth and Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith.

Once a month we have been printing columns by Schneider, Miele, as well as veterans’ affairs columnist Chuck N. Baker and local Glenn Nakadate. They have been a good variety of voices about issues important to and topics interesting to people who live in Boulder City.

With Schneider retiring, I would like to find that new voice among the 15,000 who live here.

I really don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it.

Be the envy of your friends, the talk of parties, the hushed whispers when you walk into local restaurants.

The pay is low ($50), the hours short (one column a month), but it could increase your stature in the community beyond measure.

I can’t tell you how many times I’m somewhere around town and hear, “Hey, I read your column.” Of course, what they sometimes say after that isn’t fit for print in this nice, family-friendly paper.

It would be good if the new columnist has a thick skin.

My ideal candidate would be a longtime resident with the ability to string together cohesive sentences while knowing the difference between effect and affect.

Or there, their and they’re.

Submissions should deal with the Boulder City area (Lake Mead counts) and be no longer than 550 words. How you deal with the topic is up to you — politics, community activities, social life — but the final decision of who will become the new columnist will be up to me.

I believe that as we move deeper in to the digital age that brings the world to our fingertips, small towns are reconnecting with their community newspapers for what is happening in their backyard.

If the Boulder City Review wasn’t following what was going on within the city, how else would you get that information? The city doesn’t even have a Facebook page or a public information officer.

Thomas Jefferson has one of my favorite quotes about newspapers: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Send three column ideas and a 550-word sample column to me at aknightly@reviewjournal.com.