Freedom of speech versus freedom to be obnoxious.

That might be the best way to frame the conversation that has been taking place on our Opinion pages and online – not to mention in my personal e-mail folder – ever since I chose to publish a letter to the editor last Sunday about the Legislature’s ill-fated attempt to adopt a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Check that.

It wasn’t so much about impeachment per se as it was about the arguably insulting language directed at the prime sponsor of the resolution: state Rep. Betty Hall of Brookline.

Do you ever wonder why some letters to the editor are published and others are not? Or which ones end up jumping to the front of the line? Or why some have about as much chance of being published as your weekly grocery list?

Well, if you do, I don’t blame you.

Before I started this job, I wondered about that, too.

Now that I’ve been making these decisions on a daily basis for the last seven months, I thought it might be helpful to offer some insight into why some letters get published and others don’t.

Several weeks ago, when I sat down with my boss to discuss my goals for 2008, I suggested making a more concerted effort to use and expand our Reader Advisory Network this year.

The RAN group, if you aren’t familiar with it, consists of individuals willing to share their e-mail addresses with us in return for the opportunity to play a role with their local newspaper.

Since the first group was recruited in 2003, we have relied on members for their assistance in any number of ways: helping to set policy, participating in national journalism surveys, suggesting questions to ask candidates for public office, participating in a roundtable discussion on bias and credibility at Rivier College, and even serving as sources for news stories when appropriate.

The presidential campaign wasn’t the only thing that came to an end after the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary election.

So did the publication of primary-related letters to the editor that had graced Page B-3 of The Sunday Telegraph nearly every week since Oct. 7.

Given that, I thought it would be worthwhile – if somewhat scary – to look back and share with you some statistics on the number and types of letters published that address important questions like:

Were we fair? Did we publish an equal number of letters about candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties? Did the number of letters published reflect the total number of letters received on those candidates? And how did we deal with the sensitive issue of pro-candidate vs. anti-candidate letters?

Today’s endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president no doubt answers one of the questions some of you may have had leading up to the state’s Jan. 8 primary.

The editorial addresses both the who and the why, but it doesn’t say much about the how – that is, the process used by The Telegraph editorial board to arrive at a Democratic endorsement today and a Republican endorsement to be published next Sunday.

So I thought it would be beneficial to spend a few minutes explaining what might otherwise seem like a mysterious process.

During my 18 years here at The Telegraph, I've had the opportunity to meet and interview dozens of presidential candidates, either as the newsroom coordinator of our presidential primary coverage or, this time around, as a member of the newspaper's editorial board.

Among those candidates were two who ultimately made it all the way to the Oval Office: Democrat William Jefferson Clinton in 1992 and Republican George Walker Bush in 2000.

And, given that our editorial board has interviewed most of the major candidates so far this year, it's my expectation that we've already met or will meet the individual who will become the 44th president of the United States.

But there's something else that has made this year's presidential editorial board sessions special -- and that's been our partnership with instructor Jim Pfeiffer and his video production and broadcasting students at Nashua High School South.

Now that the city elections are over, I thought it might be a good time to review how we did handling election-related letters to the editor over the last two months.

Trying to keep current with letters is always a challenge, but at no time is it more difficult than during election time – be it local, state or federal – when both time and space are at a premium.

There are always people who want to get in their two cents’ worth prior to Election Day, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that I received a few phone calls and e-mails from people inquiring about why their letters never got published.

Fair enough.

That prompted me to do two things:

First and foremost, I would like to thank those of you who responded to my desperate plea for help last Sunday on what to do with the growing number of letters about the presidential primary – specifically, the vote-for and don’t-vote-for letters.

If the majority of the letters are as thoughtful as your responses, then I won't have much to complain about.

As you recall, I listed four possible options in how to deal with these letters – some of which are genuine expressions of a voter’s feelings, while others are no doubt orchestrated or at least encouraged by a particular campaign:

When I took on the job of editorial page editor four weeks ago, I thought the biggest challenge would be helping to conceive and execute the daily editorials that appear in this newspaper some 365 days a year.

Silly me. I should have given more thought to the letters to the editor that arrive each day from all over the country, be they by e-mail, fax, snail mail or personal delivery.

Now, I’m not referring to just any letters here, but those letters. And by those letters I mean the letters that arrive on a daily basis extolling either the virtues or vices of the Democratic and Republican candidates running for president of the United States.

Such is the life of an editorial page editor in the first-primary state – at least for now. 

Now that the mayoral primary election is over, I thought it would be a good time to respond to some of the questions -- and off-base rumors -- that have surfaced since we published the three-candidates-once-filed-for-bankruptcy story four days before the election.

Some have been raised in letters to the editor. Others have come in personal e-mails to the newsroom. Still others have been raised on our online forums under topics such as "Rootovich reaction to bankruptcy story," "Tuesday's election results in Nashua" and "Nashua city voters can make a difference Tuesday," among others.

But before I explain the sequence of events that led to the story, let me try to dispel one rumor that has been raised repeatedly in our forums despite the best efforts of Telegraph Managing Editor/Online Damon Kiesow to refute them:

For those of you who may have missed the announcement in last Saturday's business section, I would like to take a moment to introduce myself to you as The Telegraph's new editorial page editor.

Or maybe I should say "reintroduce" myself.

After 18 years at the paper - the last two as editor in chief - I am moving over as part of a newsroom reorganization to replace Claudette Durocher, a 44-year veteran of this paper who officially retired from this position a week ago Friday.

As a result, I thought it would be appropriate to give you an idea of what you should expect on our opinion pages going forward, whether you visit these pages in print or online each day.

Check that: Let me tell you what you shouldn't expect.

A few readers contacted me earlier this week to express their strong displeasure over our use of the phrase "Bush's Brain" in a front-page headline Tuesday reporting the resignation of longtime adviser Karl Rove.

The issue doesn't appear to be whether the headline "'Bush's brain' announces resignation" is factually correct: Rove has been referred to as such numerous times over the years. In fact, it was even used in the title of the book "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential" published in 2004.

Rather, the issue appeared to be whether it was appropriate to use the term in the context of a front-page news story. While "Bush's brain" may be a term of endearment for Rove, I would think most would agree it doesn't reflect particularly well on the current president.