Within five minutes of each other, I took phone calls this morning from Erie Times-News readers who a)accused the editors of printing another "scathing indictment" of President Bush; and b) "shocking me by printing a negative story about Bush on the front page."

Both callers were firm in their conviction that the Erie Times-News is a) "a left-wing newspaper that's constantly ripping the president and his aides," and b) "an ultra-conservative newspaper that amazed me by finally catching up with the rest of the world on Bush's sorry record."

So, is the Times-News a "left-wing rag" or a "conservative mouthpiece for the Republicans"? Well, I guess that would be up to the readers to decide. I can tell you that, judging from my calls and mail, readers are convinced the newspaper is both, which might be a good thing.

I once worked for an old editor who said, "If half the readers have you pegged one way, and the other half have you pegged another, the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle." I think, in this case, he was right.

More and more in America, we'be become a stratified society. To many of us think it can only be one way or the other; there's never enough room for something to fall into the middle.

The Times-News editorial pages rarely shy away from controversial topics, and this point is effectively illustrated in the cartoons that appear on the pages. In the last three months, I've kept count of the calls of complaint I've taken about cartoons. Seven readers called to say the cartoons were unfair to the conservatice point of view, while nine called to accuse the cartoons of bashing moderate or liberal points of view.

Sometimes, it's the news itself that triggers a backlash of venom. The recent shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech, for instance, brought out many readers who complained about "America's insane gun laws", as well as readers who lamented that the students at Virginia Tech weren't better armed so as to be able to "stop this madman."

As I told the conservative caller this morning, the key is to keep the dialogue going. A newspaper shouldn't just adopt a point of view and never budge from it. The Times-News doesn't do that now, nor will it ever, I would guess, do it in the future.

-- Kevin Cuneo

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