Welcome to your new, and improved, Opinion Page

Welcome to our new Opinion page.

Let me take you on a quick tour. On the left side of the page, you'll find contact information for local, state and federal officials. We plan to rotate the information, with the idea that each public official — city, council, state and federal representatives — will appear once a month.

Also in that spot, on a weekly basis, we will run information from our online edition — blog comments, a list of most-read stories, results from the online poll and hot topics for letters.

On the right side of the page, you'll see a new look for the "Bee's View" and the Bonner County history column. At the bottom of the page, you'll find information on how to contact us and how to submit letters to the editor.

In the middle of the page, you'll see a new look for guest opinions and letters to the editor.

The goal is improved readability and an effort to get more letters onto your Opinion page.

Which brings me to the final stop in our tour — the letters. Your views and your conversations are what this page is all about. We want to publish as many of them as we can. To do that, letters must be 250 words or less. Longer letters will no longer be run as guest opinions. Instead, letter writers will be asked to edit their letter or given the option of having us edit them.

Guest opinions will still run — but writers will need to get approval first.

Caroline Lobsinger is the managing editor of the Daily Bee.