This is in response to Jill Schwab's letter "Pacemaker Award given to liberals" (SN 11/12) criticizing The State News for winning the Pacemaker.

You wag the liberal tag around as if it's a crime to be anything but conservative.

So, because of this, I'd like to present a short list of guidelines for conservatives who wish to read The State News:

See the stories on the front page? They are designed to be objective.

They do not put opinions in place - in fact, the goal is to remove all outside bias from the articles.

The Opinion Page is not designed to be objective. It's a place in which The State News, along with its readers, can speak their minds.

If The State News has a liberal opinion on this page, so be it, it is allowed to.

It has just as much freedom to write its opinion on this page as you do to criticize it. And, yeah, there's equal time - conservatives occasionally freelance on the page, too. Get over it.

The State News won the Pacemaker Award for much more than its Opinion Page. Compare the newspaper to other comparable college newspapers across the country.

The professionalism strikes everywhere, from the quality of the writing, the depth of the articles, the quality of the design and graphics and, most of all, the ability to connect with its readers.

You might have a problem with it, but I can guarantee you that if this paper were created by a bunch of unprofessional slobs who didn't know how to make a newspaper, even if they were conservative, you'd have a much bigger problem.

So, right-leaning citizens of the world, throw away your Ann Coulter visions of liberal hatred, because liberals threw away their Michael Moore visions of liberal questioning long ago when reading The State News.

Learn to love your college newspaper, because if you spend four years criticizing it for silly reasons, you've wasted your time.

The goal of the paper, first and foremost, is to inform everyone, not just liberals.

Ernie Smith
journalism and political science senior