Kip Currier: Post to X from my Bloomsbury editor regarding my 10/9/25 library-themed Letter to the Editor:
Thank you, @BloomsburyLU author Kip Currier, for your reasoned and passionate defense of libraries in 2 PA newspapers. Libraries are the bedrock of healthy, equitable communities, and we couldn't be more proud to support libraries and library workers. https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8750699042164055722/5219361931786295174
I am sharing a copy of my library-themed 10/9/25 Letter to the Editor that was published in the print versions and the digital versions of the Oil City (PA) paper The Derrick and the Franklin (PA) Times-Union newspapers in Venango County, Pennsylvania. The two newspapers share the same Monday-Saturday content under their own banners for each city. I wrote my letter in response to a 9/26/25 Letter to the Editor written by a Cranberry (Township) resident (not to be confused with the Cranberry in Butler County); I've copied the writer's letter below, after mine. Note: The typo at the start of the newspapers' copy of my letter was the fault of the paper and was not in the letter I emailed to them.
Editor,
This is in response to the Sept. 26 letter to the editor titled “Tax proposal needs to ‘die’ with the library” by Betty M. Hepler.
The author could not be more wrong or misinformed about the state of American libraries and the value they contribute to our lives and communities: libraries are vital necessities and community anchors in towns and cities throughout this nation. See www.pewresearch.org.
1. Libraries provide information and resources that help to educate citizens at all levels of our communities — from blue collar to white collar workplaces and everything in between. See www.ala.org.
2. Research studies demonstrate that libraries economically benefit businesses that are located nearby. See www.imls.gov.
3. Research data also show that libraries are a good “return on investment” (ROI): for every dollar of support to a library, library users are able to save hundreds of dollars by checking out thousands of books, movies, video games, and more, at no charge. See https://slol.libguides.com.
4. Today’s libraries offer all kinds of life-enhancing activities and services — story time for kids, book discussion groups for teens and seniors, access to free WiFi and computers, and classes and webinars on topics like “where to find jobs,” “starting your own business” and “how to use AI chatbots.” See https://action.everylibrary.org.
5. Libraries have been a foundational part of human life and history for thousands of years. They are essential tools and places that can benefit our lives; enable us to think, learn, and grow from our yesterdays; and fuel our hopes and dreams for better todays and tomorrows.
Libraries continue to change and evolve to better suit and meet our needs, just as humans and societies must change, adapt and evolve in order to survive and thrive.
Each of us knows that we need to take good care of ourselves to live the best lives we can. Let’s take good care of the libraries that support and serve us too. See https://www.ala.org.
Long live the library!
— Kip Currier,
Emlenton
Editor,
I am amazed that we are trying to keep alive a mostly dead memory — the library. We have been propping them up for decades.
The Encyclopedia salesman has lost his job; books are not being sold at the same rate as before, being available on tape or kindle now; libraries and bookstores have fallen to the side of the road.
Wake up! Most things have a time to shine but lose out to progress. Now we are trying to keep alive something that needs to admit its death.
The overburdened taxpayers of this country are having the blame and responsibility thrown on their shoulders.
On the front side, one may think it is a charge of $12.50. But my understanding is the cost is $12.50 per every $50,000 in assessment. All properties, for the most part, have seen a dramatic rise in their assessment; so this is a lot of money for something that is dead.
Let it die!
Turn it into a museum. No more taxes.
— Betty M. Hepler,
Cranberry
Talya Minsberg , The New York Times; A.I.-Generated Reading List in Chicago Sun-Times Recommends Nonexistent Books
"The summer reading list tucked into a special section of The Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer seemed innocuous enough.
There were books by beloved authors such as Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee; novels by best sellers including Delia Owens, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Brit Bennett; and a novel by Percival Everett, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner.
There was just one issue: None of the book titles attributed to the above authors were real. They had been created by generative artificial intelligence.
It’s the latest case of bad A.I. making its way into the news. While generative A.I. has improved, there is still no way to ensure the systems produce accurate information. A.I. chatbots cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false, and they often make things up. The chatbots can spit out information and expert names with an air of authority."
DAVID BAUDER, ASSOCIATED PRESS via The Hill; Washington Post columnist quits after her opinion piece criticizing owner Jeff Bezos is rejected
Robert Reich, The Guardian; Three billionaires: America’s oligarchy is now fully exposed
"One of the unacknowledged advantages of the horrendous era we’ve entered is that it is revealing the putrid connections between great wealth and great power for all to see.
Oligarchs are fully exposed and they are defiant. It’s like hitting the “reveal codes” key on older computers that let you see everything.
On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person in America, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, announced that the paper’s opinion section would henceforth focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets”.
Anything inconsistent with this view would not be published, according to his statement. “Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned, as he should have...
Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, bought Twitter in 2022, laid off everyone who was filtering out hateful crap on the platform, renamed it X and turned it into a cesspool of lies in support of Trump.
Mark Zuckerberg, the second-richest person, has followed suit, allowing Facebook to emit lies, hate and bigotry in support of Trump’s lies, hate and bigotry.
All three of these men were in the first row at Trump’s inauguration. They, and other billionaires, have now exposed themselves for what they are.
They are the oligarchy. They continue to siphon off the wealth of the nation. They are supporting a tyrant who is promising them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks that will make them even richer.
They are destroying democracy so they won’t have to worry about “parasites” (as Musk calls people who depend on government assistance) demanding anything more from them.
When billionaires take control of our communication channels, it’s not a win for free speech. It’s a win for their billionaire babble."
Joshua Benton, The Atlantic;
His decision will only make The Washington Post a weaker institution.
"But the scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering, and this decision can only make the Post a weaker institution.
Let’s get the motivation out of the way. This is the same Jeff Bezos who decided to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election—a move that led more than 250,000 paying Post readers to cancel their subscriptions within days. The same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary—the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70 percent of whichwill go directly into Trump’s pockets. All of that cash seems to have served as a sort of personal seat license for Bezos, earning him a spot right behind the president at the inauguration. The tech aristocracy’s rightward turn is by now a familiar theme of the postelection period, and it doesn’t take much brain power to see today’s announcement as part of the same shift."
MICHAEL SCHAFFER , Politico; Dying in Darkness: Jeff Bezos Turns Out the Lights in the Washington Post’s Opinion Section
"In personally announcing that he was dramatically re-orienting the editorial line, and in fact wouldn’t even run dissenting views, Bezos added another sharp example to a narrative that represents a grave threat to the Post’s image: The idea that its owner is messing around with the product in order to curry favor with his new pal Donald Trump, who has the power to withhold contracts from Amazon and other Bezos companies.
The paper’s image is not some abstract question for journalism-school professors. It’s a matter of dollars and cents. If readers don’t trust a publication’s name, no amount of Pulitzer-worthy scoops will fix it. For Bezos, a guy who believes that the Post needs to gain a broad-based audience, it’s a baffling blind spot...
Owners may get the final say at publications they own, but the wisest among them have let their newsrooms and editorial boards make their own decisions without fear or favor. That’s to prevent the very impression that Bezos is making — that of a mogul trying to disguise his own predilections as independent thought...
Yet even as leadership talked about amping up readership, the owner personally alienated real and potential readers: first by spiking the endorsement, then by showing up in the line of moguls at Trump’s inauguration and now by declaring that the publication would have one editorial line for all of its contributors. It all made his publication look wimpy, or possibly corrupt.
Instead of being an occasionally fussy repository of mostly mainstream points of view, the venerable publication’s opinion pages now risk looking like a vessel for a very rich owner to curry favor with the man who runs the government. It’s going to be hard to keep that image from sticking to the whole organization — including the non-wimpy, non-corrupt reporting corps that keep digging up scoops on the administration.
Bezos, of all people, should know this: He’s the branding whiz who came up with “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Among many journalists, Wednesday’s bombshell announcement is being debated as a matter of media ethics: Was Bezos within his rights as an owner to call the tune on opinion matters? Or was this type of process meddling a violation of norms that go back at least to the 1950s?...
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” he added. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”
Sounds good late at night in the dorm room. But does said freedom include, say, the freedom to start a union at an Amazon warehouse? Or run a business without worrying that some monopolistic e-commerce behemoth is going to drive you under? Come to think of it, these sound like great subjects for energetic debate on a pluralistic op-ed page somewhere. Too bad Bezos, instead of embracing the great American history of arguing about freedom, announced that he’s not so keen on debate."
Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian ; Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell
"Owners and publishers of news organizations often exert their will on opinion sections. It would be naive to think otherwise.
But a draconian announcement this week by Jeff Bezos, the Washington Postowner, goes far beyond the norm.
The billionaire declared that only opinions that support “personal liberties” and “free markets” will be welcome in the opinion pages of the Post.
“Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” he added.
The paper’s top opinion editor, David Shipley, couldn’t get on board with those restrictions. He immediately – and appropriately – resigned.
Especially in the light of the billionaire’s other blatant efforts to cozy up to Donald Trump, Bezos’s move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization he bought in 2013...
What is clear is that Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.
It’s appalling. And, if you care about the role of the press in America’s democracy, it’s tragic.
“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at the Post,” Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor until 2021 and the author of the 2023 memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, told me in an email Wednesday.
“I have always been grateful for how he stood up for the Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interest,” Baron said. “Now, I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”...
This outrageous move will enrage them. I foresee a mass subscriber defection from an outlet already deep in red ink; that must be something businessman Bezos is willing to live with.
He must also be willing to live with hypocrisy.
“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” Baron pointed out, recalling that it was only weeks ago when the Post described itself in an internal mission statement as intended for “all of America”.
“Now,” Baron noted, “its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.”
It’s all about getting on board with Trump, to whose inauguration Bezos – through Amazon, the company he co-founded – contributed a million dollars. That allowed him a prime seat, along with others of his oligarchical ilk."
Washington Post staff , The Washington Post; Post owner Bezos announces shift in opinions section; Shipley to leave
"What readers are saying
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink ; ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really? Who will stand up for democracy?
"As I write this, there are scattered and inspiring examples of bravery all around us — prosecutors, judges, even the occasional lawmaker. But in the main, we are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are not the home of the brave. We are a country full of people smilingly capitulating to a tyrant...
Collaborating. Exactly that. It is fashionable now. Bravery, less so.
It’s the media owners who are rejecting advertisements from the pro-democracy movement and letting go of cartoonists who challenge power and settling bogus lawsuits to protect their wider commercial interests, and trying to position themselves in the Dear Leader’s good graces. Why do they even own newspapers? Maybe they would be better off owning banks. Do they know what newspapers are for?...
Then there are the CEOs, who, five years ago, proudly positioned themselves as avatars of a new future of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now purge those programs from their own companies. They have more power with the resources at their command than most people who have ever lived, but it is not enough to give them courage. They would sell out their own colleagues, make them feel less part of the team, in order to please a Dear Leader who would sell them out in a Wall Street second...
It is the university leaders who, instead of defending their faculty — one of the only bastions of protected thinkers who can actually tell the truth without fear because of tenure — are bending over backwards to please the wannabe autocrat. Campuses are now full of fear of a new McCarthyism. How does it feel to work for leaders who do not have your back?
Collaborating.
We are learning about ourselves as a country. We are learning who among us and around us is brave."
Margaret Sullivan , The Guardian; How Jeff Bezos can stop the bleeding at the Washington Post
"More than 400 newsroom staffers at the Washington Post pleaded with the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, this week to do something about their beloved paper’s rapid – and very public – decline.
“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent,” an extraordinary letter to Bezos read in part, as first reported by NPR’s David Folkenflik. It was signed by some of the Post’s most respected names, including the investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and the unofficial dean of DC politics writers Dan Balz.
I feel their pain and join their cause. I was proud to work at the Washington Post for six years, until 2022, as the paper’s media columnist. My ties to the paper go back much further; it was the Post’s Watergate reporting that piqued my interest, as a teenager, in journalism and (along with a whole generation of other young people) drew me into a lifelong career. I know and admire many reporters, editors, photographers, videographers, designers and others at the paper, and doubt I’ll ever give up my subscription...
Bezos may not care. The billionaire who bought the paper for $250m in 2013 has been in supplication mode to Donald Trump for months. One of the world’s richest individuals, Bezos seems more interested in palling around with the likes of fellow billionaire Elon Musk.
But let’s say he does care, for reasons that may span the spectrum from preserving his own place in history to defending press rights to improving the Post’s red-drenched bottom line.
What could he do, immediately, to stem the bleeding?
First, he should show up – soon – to hold a town hall with the newsroom, answer questions and take the heat. Do it on the record...
Second, he should clearly state – publicly – that he understands the importance of editorial freedom and pledge not to interfere with it. And he should communicate that he gets the importance of the Post’s history and mission, and that he will support it.
Third, he should dump his handpicked publisher, Will Lewis, from whom many of these problems originate. Lewis, a British journalist who hails from the world of Rupert Murdoch, is far from a paragon of journalistic excellence or good judgment. His appointment has been rejected by the body of the Post (and, eventually, by its readers); to put it mildly, the graft didn’t take. Recognizing that, and immediately beginning a search for a more suitable replacement, would be a huge – and essential – step in the right direction.
All of this should be transparent to the public, in keeping with how the Post has conducted itself for many years. It’s a core value."
Elisabeth Ribbans, The Guardian; The Guardian’s editorial code has been updated – here’s what to expect
"Much has changed since 2011 – at the Guardian, in the way society shares information and opinions, and in the world at large. The updates reflect this. But as “the embodiment of the Guardian’s values”, which is how the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, described the code in an email to staff today, the standards by which journalists agree to be held accountable, while geared (as far as possible) to the modern environment, seek to maintain something immutable: trust."
FOR SUBSCRIBERS, The San Diego Union-Tribune; The Backstory: Paywalls and the ethics of charging for news content
[Kip Currier: Not a joke...This story --
is only available to subscribers.
Hey, San Diego Union-Tribune, you might want to think about making a piece about the ethics of paywalls accessible to non-subscribers too. You might actually persuade some people to your viewpoint and generate some worthwhile conversation about the pros and cons of paywalls.
Bad editorial and marketing decisions, as subscriptions to many newspapers continue to decrease and local news coverage is increasingly endangered.]
Sarah Moroz, The Daily Beast; ‘Maus’ Author Art Spiegelman: ‘We Are on the Brink of Fascism’
"“Comics are an art of communication,” Spiegelman said, standing firmly in contrast to so-called “high art.” In the past, “communicating too easily was considered commercial,” he noted, but countered simply: “I think art is anything that gives shape to your thoughts or feelings.”...
“Cartoonists are gone,” Spiegelman said. “Humor has become more and more dangerous… Pictures are dangerous.” Editors fear “different interpretations,” he lamented: “Newspapers want to keep every reader they have—so it’s better to talk to the stupid ones.” He concluded: “Every time someone says something satirical, they get cancelled.”"
"Victoroff requested that the Reformer "immediately remove the aforementioned infringing material from its website, immediately notify the source of the infringing content of this notice, inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to The Brattleboro Reformer News website in the future." The Reformer has declined to take down the picture on First Amendment grounds. In a response, Fredric D. Rutberg, the president of New England Newspapers Inc., which owns the Reformer, refused to remove the picture from the Reformer's website. "The photo in question depicts a local food vendor whose sign identifies his business as Tito's Tacos," wrote Rutberg. "While this use of the name Tito's Tacos may indeed infringe on your client's registered trademark, it is our opinion that the photo in question does not constitute an infringement of your client's trademark. At best it is a 'fair use' of trademarked material." "Tito's greatly respects your newspaper's First Amendment rights of free speech," Victoroff responded in an email to Rutberg, "but the use of its trademarked name in the [photo and news story] seriously dilutes and erodes its trademark. ... Every day the Tito's Tacos family must defend and protect its trademark rights from death by 1,000 cuts or risk losing its name and trademark.""
"In this case, as the ad dollars that have long financed journalism vaporize into the electronic ether, you don’t know with any certainty that the best services that newspapers have provided — holding public officials to account, rooting out corruption — will live on. If anything, today’s “efficiencies” may even set readers back by pumping out lowest-common-denominator nonsense or, at worst, disinformation. Just look at what happened last week after that Goliath of the digital transformation, Facebook, pared back the team of “curators” and copy editors who oversaw the selection process for its “Trending Topics” feed. Instead, it gave more control over to an algorithm... The Facebook experience wasn’t all that far off from the doomsday scenario John Oliver recently envisioned on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.”... Know-nothing press haters may say that news organizations are going out of business because the public is shunning them, but that’s not the case at all. Through online exposure, newspapers are reaching more people than ever. The problem is how they make money. Circulation for physical newspapers is declining, and so is print advertising; digital ads remain far less profitable. The trick is finding a way to make up the lost revenue."
[Post #1,500, since starting this Ethics blog in 2010] "Kate McClymont, 58, has been breaking news at The Sydney Morning Herald for decades. One of the newspaper’s marquee journalists, Ms. McClymont appears in the paper’s ads. “We have been holding the powerful in this city to account for a long time,” Ms. McClymont said. Most recently, she pursued a state government minister, Eddie Obeid, uncovering how his private businesses were improperly benefiting from his public role. Mr. Obeid was found guilty in June of misusing his public office. He will soon face a second court case over mining leases he obtained from the state government. “We have shone a light where crooks would prefer places remained dark,” Ms. McClymont said. “I hate the idea of people getting away with anything.” “It is bad for democracy,” she added, “if this voice is diminished in any way.”"
"So part of what’s interesting about Oliver’s bit — which looked at both the causes of the decline as well as the effects, with his usual combination of hyperventilating moralism and comic exaggeration — is that some seem frustrated with it. And not just people who hate the press, but people who value what it does. The most visible of these criticisms so far has come from the president of the Newspaper Association of America, who praised the segment’s opening. “But making fun of experiments,” David Chavern wrote, “and pining away for days when classified ads and near-monopolistic positions in local ad markets funded journalism is pointless and ultimately harmful.” Sullivan, who was once the executive editor of the Buffalo News and the public editor of the New York Times, hit back sharply in a Post piece: Actually, no. What Oliver did was precisely nail everything that’s been happening in the industry that Chavern represents: The shrinking staffs, the abandonment of important beats, the love of click bait over substance, the deadly loss of ad revenue, the truly bad ideas that have come to the surface out of desperation, the persistent failures to serve the reading public."
"Crossword puzzles compiled by a man accused of plagiarism will no longer be published in the American daily newspaper USA Today. According to a statement issued by his syndication agent, Universal Uclick, Timothy Parker will not return to USA Today as its crosswords editor. Nor will his work appear in any publication owned by USA Today’s parent company, Gannett."
