From the editor: It's time for political announcements to appear

What a difference a year makes.
In states where the governor and other statewide office-holders are elected on the same ballot as the president, voters get a break, like a roughneck working seven and seven: a year of elections, a year off. A year of elections, a year off.
But not in Louisiana. We go for endurance here: a year of judicial, district attorney and congressional elections, followed by a year of electioneering for governor, other statewide offices and sheriff. And finally a year of presidential and congressional elections.
We’re in the backstretch of that second year now. So it’s time to invite, and to publish, formal candidate announcements.
This is a sort of Acadiana tradition. It’s calling card by people who plan to make a run for some political office. Candidates each submit an announcement with some combination of background and ideas for the office. You’ve seen them, even if you didn’t realize it.
We’ve already held on to a couple of announcements because we thought it was too early. That changes Wednesday, when we hope to begin running them.
We’ll label each one with the words “Candidate announcement” so readers will know the source. The announcements may run on Page 2 or Page 12, but they won’t run on the front page. We can’t guarantee we can do that for all of them. As you can imagine, fairness is important in this process.
Some guidelines:
—Submit announcements to bdecker@daily-review.com.
—Announcements should be no more than 300 words, and we’ll have to crack the whip on this one, again for the sake of fairness. If you want to write five words, good luck to you. But you can’t publish 305.
—Our idea is to run the announcements before qualifying, which will be Sept. 8-10. We’ll accept the announcements no later than Sept. 12.
—We’ll run a picture with each announcement. Please make this a head-and-shoulders picture. It will run in our standard “mug shot” size, half a column by ½ inch. No dogs, cats or families, please. An emailed jpeg with a resolution of at least 300 dpi works best. We can scan a hard-copy picture if you drop it off at our office, 1014 Front St. in Morgan City.
—Again for the sake of fairness, these announcements are not a good place for ad hominem attacks on opponents or potential opponents.
Talk about yourself, as hard as this may be for many politicians.
—In my experience, the most effective use of these announcements is likely to be a straight- forward piece of exposition about your qualifications and vision for the office, even if squeezing them into 300 words seems impossible.
Slogans, logos, and warm-and-fuzzy pictures with the folks are best left for your website or advertisements.
We have people who can help you with the advertisements, too.
Good luck on the hustings.

This column was written by Bill Decker, managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach him at bdecker@daily-review.com.