They upbraid us for not being thorough enough on the subject and think we are taking sides. They say we are unfair, perhaps even mean spirited and either shouldn't have reported the story at all or should have talked to more people. "Lousy or lazy journalism," they say.

We check with ourselves, reread the story, wonder if we were unfair or didn't do enough or could have reported the story better.

In late October some readers were upset with the way we reported on the city council investigation of Council candidate, incumbent Tim Risch. The stories came out right before the election. Risch supporters thought we were being manipulated by those supporting his opponent and that our reporting wasn't thorough enough.

Now we are being called Risch supporters because of our coverage of the story about the city manager being put on paid administrative leave.

Our job as a newspaper is to reflect the community—the happy, the beautiful, the inspired, the issues, the trends, the conflicts. We report what we see as the truth—as if one can ever gather up enough information to contain the whole truth of any story, but we make that effort.

Throughout the year that I have been editor of the Sun, I have heard from various people in the community that some council members have wanted to get rid of City Manager Bob LaSala. When we got a call from one of our readers that LaSala wasn't at a meeting, we called to find out why.

When we were told we would have to talk to the mayor, we knew something was up. But when the mayor said LaSala had been placed on paid administrative leave, we were surprised. We knew his contract allowed for a 90-day period after the election before council could let him go. And an administrative leave usually means there's an investigation into something the person has done. So we've been trying to find out what happened. The only people who've been willing to talk to us are the ones quoted in the articles.

At this point what we have are questions. What did LaSala do? Has the council found a way to get rid of him sooner than 90-days? Is what is happening ethical and fair? This is community business, and as a community paper, our task is to find out the truth as best as we can. The people living in a community need to know what their government is doing and why. Whether we have personal biases or not, our job as journalists is to try and get the truth.

Our letters to the editor section of the Sun has a different purpose. It is part of our opinion page. I believe this section is very important because it is the one place residents can put their thoughts and concerns out for the rest of the community. I don't know where else there is an open, widely read forum like this.

We try to print them all. Sometimes we ask the letter writer to shorten or even rewrite a letter if it's hard to understand. We've held back a few letters that have been outrageously mean spirited. But we do not choose letters for their political or philosophical point of view. If there is a preponderance of letters supporting one side of an issue or another, it's simply because that's what's coming in.

However, if a reader sends a letter and doesn't see it in the paper, we welcome your phone calls because sometimes a letter gets lost in the system.

Some of the letters have alerted us to issues we then look into. In fact, because so much has been made of campaign spending in the last election, we are looking carefully at all campaign contributions.

We are proud of the Sunnyvale Sun and the work our reporters are doing. We hope readers will always contact us when they are concerned about a story.

Sandy Sims is the editor of The Sun. Contact her at 408.200.1055 or via email, ssims@svcn.com.