Editorial Roundtable takes the form of a conversation that Writers Group editorial director Alan Shearer and managing editor James Hill will have with a Board of Contributors made up of editorial page editors from around the country.

The idea is to pose a question to the contributors about their thinking on the crucial issues of the day -- and ask them to tell us how they develop their approaches for their commentary.

Then, once the Roundtable has been posted, we ask readers to join the conversation.

Roundtables will be posted weekly here on The Writers Group site, and participating editors can link the Roundtable to the Web sites of their own newspapers. In addition, we'll be on Facebook.

One thing we hope readers pick up from the Editorial Roundtable is the tremendous commitment these editors have to serving the public in the spirit of the First Amendment and the right to have an informed citizenry.

Don't look for ideological food fights in the Roundtable, because we're going to keep that off-limits. Same goes for discussions about the plight of the industry -- there's more than enough of that already out there.

What we hope you find is a lively exchange of views. And we welcome your view too.

-- Alan Shearer and James Hill