I received a very straightforward idea recently from an e-mailer:</p><p>&ldquo;I have a suggestion for someone at your paper on a column. This is based upon reading the Letters to the Editor, Leonard Pitts etc. Someone should write a column and explain the difference between the opinion page and the news page. They should also explain the difference between opinion shows on cable news stations and news shows.&rdquo;</p><p>I&rsquo;m not really the best one to address the differences among TV commentators, hosts and reporters, partly because the lines aren&rsquo;t always distinct. </p><p>But as those divisions relate to The Kansas City Star, the separation between news and opinion should be clear. And I know full well from my interaction with hundreds of smart, well-informed readers that newspapers don&rsquo;t always do a good enough job explaining the difference.</p><p>The biggest confusion I hear is about the editorial board. One caller, after reading Yael T. Abouhalkah&rsquo;s Oct. 15 column about moving the Wizards facility to Village West in Kansas City, Kan., asked, &ldquo;How can I trust (his) news reporting to be straight down the middle when he writes right here that the UG&rsquo;s &lsquo;lack of public debate was shameful?&rsquo; That shows me his bias in what he puts in the other sections of the paper.&rdquo;</p><p>That&rsquo;s a perfectly understandable concern &mdash; but as a member of the editorial board, Abouhalkah isn&rsquo;t involved with the &ldquo;news side&rdquo; of the operation. He doesn&rsquo;t assign reporters to work on stories, nor does he edit them or shape news coverage.</p><p>There&rsquo;s an invisible wall between the editorial board and the rest of the newsroom. Board members don&rsquo;t attend the daily news meetings, and they have zero involvement with choosing stories. They&rsquo;re listed every day in the masthead at the bottom of the Op/Ed page, by the way, along with the names of The Star&rsquo;s senior management.</p><p>A century ago, there was no wall. Newspapers were highly opinionated in both their news coverage and editorials, and you would often find multiple papers in a town espousing radically different takes on current events, in line with their ideologies. </p><p>This model is still in effect in newspapers in some parts of the world, and it has obviously found amazingly vital new life on the Web.</p><p>Today, mainstream sources attempt to report news as fairly and accurately as possible. This column is evidence they don&rsquo;t always get it right &mdash; but its existence also shows that balance is a primary concern.</p><p>And while the separation between news and opinion is second nature to people who work at a newspaper, I agree fully that papers don&rsquo;t make the distinction explicit often enough. </p><p>&ldquo;If they don&rsquo;t write the news in the Opinion department, you should put that in the paper every day, there with their names,&rdquo; said my caller. </p><p>&ldquo;Think of it this way: I don&rsquo;t expect you to know what I do at my work, but I&rsquo;ll tell you if you ask. So I&rsquo;m asking.&rdquo;