EDITOR: A voice for the interests of our Generation Y

Calling Generation Y - we want to hear from you.
Yes, we all have labels that researchers and marketers like to give us so we can be better targeted.
Generation Ys are those born between 1982 and 2000 - they are today's youth and young adults.
Many of us can identify with the Baby Boomer tag (1946-1964) and even the Generation X (1965-81) that followed but Generation Y seems to be a whole new can of worms.
I've recently been doing some reading on Generation Y to better understand these young people who are the next generation of reporters that I will have to hire.
I was keen to understand what drove them, inspired them, retained them, made them tick.
I learned many things - they have high self-esteem and don't tolerate intimidation; they have been heavily parented and programmed; they are success-oriented; they are accustomed to quality as consumers; they are tech-savvy; they expect immediacy; they tolerate differences; they value work-life balance; and they work around, not against, authority.
Obviously, these are people of the computer/mobile phone age who think and act differently to other generations.
It also struck me that this generation didn't have a voice in our paper.
In the past few weeks I have been working with two teachers at Otumoetai College to create a platform for opinion for today's youth.
Yesterday's Opinion page was the debut page of youth opinion.
We decided to open up this page on Fridays to young people by asking their opinions/attitudes on issues of the day.
I hope you enjoyed their varied responses to the question of whether there were sufficient facilities/events in Tauranga for our youth.
I am also hoping this page will spark the interest of other opinionated young people to offer us their thoughts.
Let's face it, whether you are 18 or 80, everyone has opinions and they no doubt vary across the age groups.
And we want to hear it all.
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Still on the subject of opinion, in recent weeks we have had quite a number of letters to the editor around the issue of global warming and the prospect of a catastrophic Arctic ice melt.
There were two very adamant schools of thought on this issue and over a number of weeks they both outlined their theories and the numbers to support their arguments.
But as we have done with issues in the past, we felt the arguments had been well made and the letters had become more about disagreeing again and again with someone else's view based on figures they believed to be true.
So last weekend we advised that correspondence around this issue had closed.
Two of the writers involved in this issue didn't like this and suggested that democratic debate was being stifled.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This debate was given a good run but when the debate turned into a battle over figures and whose were correct, there could be no winners, especially readers.
That is why the issue was closed - pure and simple.
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I hope you will join me in welcoming a new columnist to our paper.
John Arts has been involved in the natural health industry for many years and from next week, on Tuesdays in our Bay Living section, he will be giving us his thoughts in his Healthy Living column.
A natural health researcher, commentator and formulator, John will also be answering reader questions on natural health matters.
From my layman's perspective, natural health seems to be a growing industry so I asked John to join us to give you some valuable insight into this side of his expertise.