Easier said than done...

It’s hard to be a small business owner let alone run a newspaper in a small town.

In the last month and a half we have printed approximately 50 letters to the editor and ran dozens of political ads. A few of them have been complete nonsense but we print them just the same.

Anyone who thinks we personally agree with all that we print is crazy. We don’t even agree with some of the articles we write and publish. However our job isn’t to judge and censor it from our readers. The Pathfinder is an open forum for everyone no matter which side their ideas land.

That being said the ad/letter Doug Anderson referenced in his letter to the editor last week, as being especially vile, probably shouldn’t have been printed on page 4 of the Nov. 1 issue. Not for the reason of it being vile but for the reason that Lee Bridges, the candidate being attacked, wasn’t able to respond to it in the paper ahead of the election.

I had a good conversation with Lee about it. She pointed me toward the Clean Campaign Act to help us create a policy that will help the paper be fair to everyone while keeping the paper an open forum for everyone at the same time, whether I agree with them or not.

As to why we’d be willing to print something so vile, we made the choice years ago to not to censor content to appease one side or the other. We try our best not to but there are plenty of days that it really is easier said than done.