Leslie Taylor

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"Take it," Dad said, when I asked him about leaving a metro editor position in The Roanoke Times newsroom and accepting an offer to join this newspaper's editorial board.

He'd consulted his buddies, all dyed-in-the-wool newspapermen, ink still coursing through their veins.

"They say, 'Take it,' " Dad said.

I could not ignore the advice of these men, chiefly the one responsible for my being in this business. The man who, tired of hearing his young daughters gabbing about youthful nothingness into the telephone, required us to read Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post and the now-defunct Washington Star and then gave us weekly current events quizzes.

I groaned then, but celebrate those quizzes now. Dad's stressing the importance of being informed, knowing what the heck is going on in the world, was a lesson more valuable than any classroom could provide.

So here I am, away from the daily bustle of the newsroom, where I spent more than 20 years as a reporter and editor, in a decidedly new world. I have taken the advice and now have the task of helping shape the institutional viewpoint of this newspaper.

I'd dabbled with "opinion," if we can so call it, back in the late 1990s. I shared a weekly workplace column called "The Daily Grind" with another newsroom staffer. But that was a different animal. Those, I reminded people who referred to the column in making sense of my move to editorial, involved reported columns with a very focused bent.

Former Editorial Page Editor Tommy Denton quickly put life in the new world in proper perspective: "Yeah, that column. That column was OK. But here, we're talking about advocacy journalism."

I've wanted to plaster the walls of my office with his words -- and the words of Denton's successor, Dan Radmacher, who declared editorial writing the best job at a newspaper. It is freeing, liberating, he told me. (Where else can you freely lob criticism at a blowhard of national stature?)

But separating from my years of keeping opinion in check, of maintaining objectivity, has proved tougher than the whole notion sounded almost two months ago.

It has taken effort to bring opinions long simmering on a back burner to a rolling boil. I've drawn from years spent covering local government, local schools, federal courts, higher education and social services and discovered that experience does indeed count for something.

And now, to stand for something, to take sides. Publicly. Collectively. In ways that invite debate and spur change.

Heady stuff for this plain-spoken person, a reluctant transplant who moved to the Roanoke Valley from a big city in 1983, wary of small(er)-town life. Didn't take long for this valley to mellow me -- and quickly humble me by its beauty, its people and its comfortable pace.

Still, there is plenty here -- and elsewhere -- that troubles me, that frustrates me and makes me wanna holler.

But I cling to those emotions. It is what stokes the fire that fuels opinion.

Leslie Taylor is on the editorial board of The Roanoke Times.