Editorials
Editorials are written by people who run newspapers. An editorial is
an "opinion piece." Instead of giving facts, it tells how
a person feels about what is happening in the news. When we read editorials,
we learn how the people who wrote the news felt about what was happening
around them. For example, in the early 1900s, many editorials and letters
to the editor in St. John's newspapers talk about Chinese people coming
to Newfoundland. Editorials written at that time call the Chinese "the
yellow peril." 2 These editorials show us that people
were afraid of Chinese immigration.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor are written by people who want to give their
opinions on stories in the news. Most people write about things that
are close to home. People disagree and argue in letters to the editor,
so we see different sides of the same story. In St. John's in 1919,
some doctors were trying to raise money for a maternity home (a hospital
where women could go to have babies). Some people wrote letters to the
editor of the Daily News saying that they
did not like this plan. They did not think unwed mothers should be taken
care of in the same building as married women. Their letters tell us
how some people felt about single mothers. (To find out more about this,
see the essay "More Sinned Against Than Sinning: Single Mothers
and the Law in the Past," in book 5 of this series.)
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