When Wareham Week and WarehamVillageSoup.com launched last month, we promised to be a different kind of local media. Some of the differences are obvious: The design of newspaper and website. The focus on Wareham and only Wareham. The commitment to having all editorial staff members live in town and work in town.

Another difference is more subtle, but equally important: No editorials - online or in print. This week, I'd like to take a few paragraphs to explain what that means.

A newspaper's role is to provide its readers with accurate, fair, complete, understandable, interesting, and timely information. Historically, most newspapers also contain an editorial page on which the editors go beyond this basic information to tell readers what they should think about the information, how they should act on that information, who they should vote for, and so forth.

We don't think that's necessary.

People who are given accurate, fair, complete, understandable information generally make pretty good decisions on their own. Perhaps equally importantly, presenting the newspaper's opinion on the editorial page makes it easy to question whether the newspaper is "playing it straight" in covering the news.

On our Opinion page, we provide a forum for members of the community to express their opinions. We encourage anyone who would like to contribute to that forum to contact Editor Cyrus Moulton at cyrus@warehamweek.com or 508-728-2210. But you won't see us offering our opinion on that page or any page of Wareham Week or WarehamVillageSoup.com.

There's one more important point to be made about our commitment to "just the facts." Presenting accurate, fair, complete, understandable information does not permit going beyond the facts to report speculation, rumor, or even educated guesses about what is going on, might be going on, might have gone on, etc. Yup, that's all often entertaining . . . but it's not the news.

Wareham's a fascinating town. Just the facts provide us with more than enough fodder to present you with an interesting newspaper every week and an interesting website every day.