Before returning to The Bee in October, I worked for five months in the kitchen at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in Oakland.

The chefs there went to great lengths to understand their customers' preferences. But they also challenged them, from time to time, with new dishes and culinary approaches.

It's a tricky balancing act. If your loyal clients love the halibut with aioli, then you probably should offer the halibut whenever it is available.

At the same time, you don't want your menu to get stale. Some customers may get turned off by seeing the same thing on the menu, day after day. To them, regularity doesn't send a message of creativity.

I feel the same way about our opinion pages. If we end up publishing the same columnists, week after week, we are not being very creative. Readers' preferences should be respected. But sometimes their horizons should be broadened.

We've been doing that in recent weeks. Syndicated columnists such as Cal Thomas, Rich Lowry, Bob Herbert and Gail Collins have been appearing less frequently, or at all, on our Viewpoints pages. In their place, we've been running Charles Krauthammer and Michael Gerson, and more of David Brooks and Thomas Friedman.

Starting today (on page E5), we are also launching the column of Cynthia Tucker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

You likely will see other new voices in the weeks ahead.

I'd like to publish the work of Peggy Noonan, a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, the Journal doesn't seem very interested in working with us on a fair price. (Rupert Murdoch, are you listening?)

As I've stated previously, I'm committed to having a mix of viewpoints on our pages. I especially like columnists who are unpredictable, not rigidly ideological. I believe that punditry that is spirited, but not mean-spirited.

Our recent survey of reader preferences influenced some of our choices.

As I noted on Oct. 25, nearly 2,400 readers completed the online survey. Since then, we've tabulated preferences of more than 500 others who sent in letters, faxes and e-mails.

In both sets of responses, readers voiced strong support for the work of Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd, and were less favorable to Thomas and Lowry. (Despite her popularity, Dowd also earned a high number of negative responses, suggesting that many readers are turned off by her snarky style.)

We've only just started experimenting with our menu. Over the coming weeks, we'll be testing some new commentators who are developing a national following. I'll be interested in your reaction.

Commentary is not for everyone. Some readers in our survey told us they don't care for opinion in their paper. They want just the facts, ma'am.

That's fine, but there is another group of readers that passionately want to keep track of the debate – international, national, state and local. They want to be exposed to arguments that are gaining traction, even if they don't necessarily agree with them.

That's what opinion writing is all about. As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote, "The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it."

More changes ahead

Speaking of commentary, the editor who handles our California Forum section and Viewpoints pages – Gary C. Reed – is now a full-fledged member of The Bee's editorial board. As such, he will get a long-overdue chance to guide and vote on our editorial positions, including election endorsements.

Gary was born and raised in Virginia, where he delivered the Roanoke Times as a kid. After newspaper stints in Pasadena and Charlotte, N.C., Gary returned to California and joined The Bee in 1996. After a decade in the newsroom, he moved to the editorial page staff in 2006. He since has been an indispensable contributor, helping to recruit new local voices and organize the Sunday Forum section.

We'll be adding some other new names to the editorial board masthead in the weeks ahead. Change is in the air, and not just with the seasons.

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