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Editor’s column | Why we sometimes publish letters that you don’t like

Posted on July 31st, 2025 By: Vince Dice

The first thing to know about letters to the editor is this: The opinions in them are those of the writer, not necessarily Gig Harbor Now or yours truly, its editor.

The second thing to know about letters to editor is this: Even when we at Gig Harbor Now don’t agree with the content of the letter, we still publish them.

And, believe it or not, that’s the way you want it.

Two recent letters

You might be wondering why I bring this up.

Two recent letters that we published upset some readers. I think it’s safe to say they came from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

One was back in March, praising President Donald Trump and since-departed DOGE chief Elon Musk. The other, which was more recent and much more personal to our community, was about political contributions made by restaurant owner and Pierce County Charter Commission candidate Gary Parker.

Personally, I would not have written either letter. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have published them.

(As an aside, our board of directors has subsequently determined that we will only run letters to the editor about local issues, because those are the only issues we cover. So the March letter, which was about national political issues, would no longer meet our criteria. But it did at the time, so we published it.)

A public forum

One of the roles newspapers filled historically was providing a public forum where people can share their views. While social media has largely swallowed this role, letters have been a surprisingly popular feature at Gig Harbor Now. We’ve published more than 60 already in 2025.

Providing that public forum carries with it a responsibility. Specifically, that forum should be available to everyone in our audience, as long as they meet our standards and aren’t trying to pass along verifiably false information.

Obviously, when I read the two letters I mentioned above, I knew they were going to upset some readers. To be honest, my life would’ve been a lot easier if I’d just “lost” them.

But that would have meant failing in our responsibility.

If we’re going to publish letters to the editor, we need to make sure that forum is available to everyone, as long as they’re not engaging in personal attacks or defamation, promoting hate, or spreading misinformation.

Our standards

Our letters to the editor page includes this statement of our standards:

“Gig Harbor Now accepts letters to the editor of up to 800 or fewer words from area residents. Please include your name and city of residence for publication and refrain from personal attacks. We accept only one letter per writer per week.”

Some people interpreted statements in George Young’s letter about Gary Parker to be personal attacks. I don’t see it that way.

The letter detailed Parker’s financial contributions to the campaigns of Republican former state Rep. Jesse Young and to the state and county Republican parties.

George Young doesn’t write that Parker is a bad guy. In fact, he praises Parker’s restaurant and calls him “a familiar face at community events and charitable causes.”

But his statements about Parker’s donations are true, verified by the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission’s online database. And, crucially, Parker is now himself a candidate for public office: a seat on the Pierce County Charter Review Commission. That makes him a public figure.

Discussing to whom a candidate for office has previously donated strikes me as well within the realm of acceptable political speech, and not a personal attack at all.

It’s also notable that we received several subsequent letters defending Parker’s character and political beliefs — including from Parker himself. We published them, because … well, just re-read the section about “A public forum.”

Our donors

To no one’s surprise, not everybody agrees with me on the above. Several longtime readers reacted angrily to our publishing George Young’s letter.

This week, we’ve had donors either revoke their financial support or promise to do so.

As a nonprofit, reader-supported newsroom, we are grateful for everyone who supports us financially. Those contributions allow us to do work that we feel is crucial for the health of our community.

However, we cannot let donors influence our news or editorial decisions. If you think about it, you don’t want us doing that.

Newspapers and car dealers

I started my career working at weekly and daily newspapers. (Newspapers were sort of like a website, except we printed it out every day and delivered it to people’s houses. It was great.)

At small, local papers like those I worked at, car dealerships were almost invariably the largest advertiser. Many of us in the industry either worked at a paper or heard stories about papers where any story mentioning a car dealer had to be reviewed by the publisher (the big cheese at the newspaper).

Because if the car dealership pulled its ads, the entire newspaper might go out of business.

As far as I know, no paper I worked at ever changed the content of a story so as to not offend a car dealer or another big advertiser. But the whole relationship was uncomfortable.

It made one feel like the biggest advertisers had veto power over what news we published. And that hurt our credibility. Would you trust the local paper’s stories about car dealers if you knew what I just wrote?

Similarly, we can’t decide to kill stories or decline to publish opinion content out of fear of offending our donors. Because then we wouldn’t be a credible source of information, and we wouldn’t be providing a true public forum.

I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who opts out of contributing to us financially — I merely appreciate their previous support and hope they’ll reconsider. But I also hope, if you’ve actually read this far into this column, you understand why I felt I had no choice but to publish the letters.

And if you disagree, write us a letter to the editor. We’ll publish it.

Vince Dice

Vince Dice has been the editor of Gig Harbor Now since 2022.