Endorsements

I was asked recently if the Magic City Morning Star was going to be endorsing candidates for political office. The answer this year - as it has been in previous years - is no.

When I ran for a town council seat in 2003, the Magic City Morning Star did not endorse any candidates. When I ran for a state congressional seat in 2006, the Morning Star didn't endorse any candidates. Then, since I came in dead last in both of these races, perhaps I should have made some exceptions.

Please don't feel slighted if we do not officially endorse your candidacy. First of all, it's nothing personal. We have always had a policy against endorsing candidates for political office. Secondly, the reality is that our endorsement would be highly unlikely to put you over the top anyhow.

There are one or two people running for political office in November whom I support, but I do so as an individual.

The Magic City Morning Star publishes pretty much anyone who has something of interest to say, and perhaps even one or two who don't. As a newspaper, we couldn't care less about your political persuasion and, as you may have noticed in our letters to the editor section, many of us disagree with one another on a regular basis.

The Magic City Morning Star, you see, is made up of a wide mix of people, and I doubt that we could ever agree on a candidate for any office.

Political letters and articles

In any presidential election year, newspapers throughout the country are inundated with canned letters to the editor, in support one one candidate or another.

Obviously canned letters will generally not be published, likely exceptions being the first such letter that we receive, which may be published before we realized that it was a canned letter. However, subsequent letters using the same, or similar wording, are not likely to be published.

Political endorsement letters written by people from within the state of Maine will be given preference over those coming from out of state, and those from people within the greater Katahdin region will nearly always be published.

For the most part, endorsement letters coming from out of state will be published only when the editor reviewing them finds the letter to be particularly interesting or well written, when the writer is an expatriate from the Katahdin region of Maine, or when we're really having a slow day or feeling particularly generous.

I am not the only editor responsible for reviewing content for the Magic City Morning Star, and the decision of whether or not to publish a letter to the editor will be at the sole discretion of the reviewing editor.

Ken Anderson, Publisher
Magic City Morning Star
editor@magic-city-news.com