Michael Landauer, Editorial Writer, The Dallas Morning News

Michael Landauer, Editorial Writer, The Dallas Morning News

we have done something that I think works pretty well on our zoned suburban editorial page, though I have to start by saying it is always evolving. We have a two-tier system called Sounding Off. We have regular volunteer folks who write columns for us, and we do a writing workshop for them and meet with them once a month for dinner, etc. They are also the "stars" of Sounding Off, our weekly question, similar, I would imagine, to Your Turn. I call them the stars because we print their photos along with their responses and a brief description of who they are: "Plano doctor, 54," for example.

We also include other readers for the weekly question, but their photos are not printed with their responses. They have to sign up to receive the question through e-mail (on Mondays, due Thursdays). In the past year, it went from about 20 people on the list to 145. I find that people offer more thoughtful answers when they make a small commitment, in this case being on a mailing list. We have a few more ask to be added every week, and we've had about 10 people ask to be removed from the list.

As for the presentation, we ask our freelance cartoonist to draw something to go along with it so that it becomes a focal point on Saturdays, when we do not print editorials on that suburban page. I'll attach the most recent samples (a two-parter).

Finally, I have found that the simpler the question, the more responses we get. When we ask good, open-ended, thoughtful, journalistic questions, we get next to nothing. When we ask punchy (often yes or-no) questions, we get thoughtful reasoning, not just knee-jerk responses. I know, that's counter-intuitive, but it just seems to work out that way.

For very local issues, we get 15-20, but for real talkers, we get 40-50. (Circulation for this zone is about 100K.) I'd like to get more, but I think a lot of people sign up and just wait for a topic to come along they want to "Sound Off" on. It can't be all things to all people every week, but that's OK, I guess. I think it's a good tool to use on issues when we aren't sure what we want to say about them or when they don't rise to the level of a full editorial.

Attached are pdf files of the Sounding Off page: Sample 1, Sample 2