To the editor:

I am writing to question the editorial decision to place a story about the war in Iraq on page 3 rather than page 1 of the Sept. 15 Journal-World. There was no international news item on the front page of your paper that day. And yet, according to the page 3 article titled “Attacks kill scores, cut power in Iraq,” the car bombing by insurgents “was the deadliest single attack in Baghdad in six months.”

It seems to me that the article on the war might have been more important than at least two of the articles that were on the front page. These included an article on a man who wrote a song about Lawrence, and another regarding an award the city won for its anti-smoking law.

According to the article on the war, the attacks in Baghdad “struck at the heart of the U.S. strategy for fighting Iraq’s insurgency.” With an upcoming election, this seems like news that people need to hear as they consider their decision about who should be leading our country. Not only the content of news articles, but their placement in the paper can affect readers. Our country cannot afford to have the mood of the electorate influenced by media that downplay news about the disastrous direction of events in the Middle East.

Donna Masoner,

Eudora