Newspaper Editorial Page Policy: a case study in shirking responsibility

Text of letter I sent to the editor of my local newspaper yesterday:

It’s commendable that many Herald editorials focus on historical events –– we need historical perspective woven into an understanding of our times. Still, I think the editors should consider writing more often about the pressing issues facing our country right now. For example, recently Trump installed a mega-donor confederate as postmaster general, and this fellow immediately fired 23 key executives in the postal service, evidently to facilitate Trump’s project of slowing the mails so as to delegitimize mail-in voting. That’s reprehensible. And what about Trump’s dismissiveness of solidly sourced intelligence that Russia has been paying the Taliban bounties for killing American soldiers? When Trump was asked if he had confronted Putin about this in their most recent phone conversation, Trump said the subject hadn’t come up. Then there’s Trump’s welcoming Russian illegal (by its nature) interference with our election on his behalf. These are just a few examples of an endless succession of Trump’s assaults on our democracy that I think responsible newspapers like the Herald should not ignore, particularly because the overriding issue in the upcoming election isn’t about the relative merits of conservative and liberal policies, but about the survival of American democracy.