Everyone has opinion, not all need to be shared

There have been numerous sayings about people's opinions and how everybody has one and they all stink.

Well, I disagree.

While it's true that everyone has an opinion — or two or three — they don't all stink.

Friday was a perfect example.

The Boulder City Review's readers' advisory group gathered for its second meeting and each and every person had an enlightening point of view.

Since we had met before, I think the group's members were a little more comfortable sharing their thoughts. There was some lively interaction and a few great ideas.

This month, we began by getting answers to some of the questions brought up during our first gathering, namely what is our circulation and online-only content.

They also brought up the very embarrassing issue of typos, such as the one on last week's front page.

I hate them as much as the rest of you, and I assured the group — as I assure those of you reading this now — that I am doing everything in my power to make sure things like that don't happen again.

I also was touched at the concern they showed when I discussed some limitations on time and space. There even were some volunteer efforts to try to get us some extra help, possibly by using high school and college students.

It would be a win-win situation. They would get valuable real-world experience, learninghow a newspaper is produced and getting mentored in the art of writing, while we would be able to offer our readers features, such as a community calendar, that we just haven't been able to create yet.

It's not because we don't want to. Quite the contrary. Creating a community calendar has been on my to-do wish list for a while. But there is a limit to how much a single person can accomplish in one day.

And then we came to the heart of our discussion: opinions.

In some of the judges' comments from the recent Nevada Press Association, it was mentioned that there were too many opinions in the paper. I wanted to know if our readers agreed or disagreed.

While no one had any complaints about the number of opinion columns, per se, they did say they prefer to read only those that relate to Boulder City and its residents in our paper. So eliminating those that are not Boulder City-specific is under consideration.

As a bonus, it would free up some space to get in news, features and photos about life in our fair city.

The purpose of the group is to make the Boulder City Review a better paper. I appreciate the time and concern our group puts into the meeting and how freely they share their opinions with me.

It may take awhile to implement their suggestions, but I hope you will be able to reap the benefit of their suggestions in the coming weeks. Stay tuned and please keep reading.

Hali Bernstein Saylor is editor of the Boulder City Review. She can be reached at hsaylor@bouldercityreview.com or at 702-586-9523. Follow @HalisComment on Twitter.