Got a beef or 'atta boy?' Try Cheers and Jeers

Sometimes things come to your attention that you feel the need to comment on, but don’t want to say too much.

To provide a means of expressing these sentiments, whether it’s a good job to somebody or a “Come on man” as the popular ESPN segment goes, the Cheney Free Press has started a “Cheers and Jeers” space on our Opinion pages. It’s pretty simple to use, and we encourage you to do so.

It can be something or someone who you feel should get a little community recognition for doing something positive. It can be the same thing regionally, in the state, nationally or even internationally, but for the most part we encourage it to be local.

Same thing regarding something that “trips your trigger,” as the saying goes, although with this, we’d ask you to not get personal with specific people within the community. Politicians, government officials, celebrities, national leaders of all stripes, OK, fair game. Your local council member, administrator, school board member or other private individual, not so much, although if the whole group has got you irked, then all’s fair in Cheers and Jeers.

We ask you to write up your recommendations, no more than 25-30 words (Believe me, you’d be surprised how much you can say with this amount of verbiage) and email it to yours truly at the email below. You can do a cheer or a jeer or both, and if you’ve got a couple, send them along as well. We’ll figure out what we can run.

In giving credit where credit is due, this little feature isn’t something we conjured up but rather a regular addition to the Whitman County Gazette out of Colfax, although under a different name. In tracking those submissions, some weeks you’ll have all jeers or all cheers, or a balance or more of one than the other. That’s OK, our intent it to get people talking about things and perhaps gain a sample of the pulse of the community we don’t normally get in our daily interactions.

And, we’ll keep them anonymous, which to me is a little ironic. With all the criticism of the mainstream media’s use of anonymous sources — which really they aren’t anonymous so much as not named — it’s funny how many times in the past we have spoken to someone who wishes to comment on some issue, but doesn’t want us to us their name. And I’m not talking just about public officials either.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Send us your Cheer or Jeer, we’re waiting to hear from you.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.