In relation to the excellent letter to the editor from Cait McMahon (p22 8/10 issue), I note that in your response you say that you won’t be attributing “contributed articles or articles that are simply a report of an event”.

I would have thought that contributed articles are exactly the sort of items that need to be attributed. Why did you rule these ones out?

Furthermore, in reporting on an event, the way it is reported can certainly be used to push an opinion – your front-page article “Party influence not welcome” this week is a good example of this.

Come on Sentinel Times, more transparency please!

Peter Ghys, Inverloch

Editor: By “contributed articles” we mean reports from community and sporting groups. By “reports on events” we mean reports and photos of a produce market, art show, car show or racehorse meeting, etc. If reports include the writer’s opinions, they should be attributed to them. In the rare event that we include a statement by an MP or other official in its entirety, these would also be attributed. Unlike a metro paper, that may have 100s of paid contributors, we have six journalists, and no one wants to see those six names repeated dozens of times in each edition. But as we said in our response to Cait McMahon, “we have reviewed our practices” and plan to include more bylines in the future. We also plan to include a list of staff journalists up front. In the interests of “more transparency” we got very busy last week putting out a 68-page edition, including the second instalment of candidates’ information ahead of the start to voting, to make changes immediately. Thank you for your interest and relevant comment.