Keep the Olympia coverage

A few publications back, Feb. 5th, 2020, to be exact, you wrote an editorial regarding the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, of which you are a member of the board of directors. The editorial was quite informative. The main point I believe you were looking for is whether it’s worthwhile to keep the [coverage of Olympia] going. I don’t remember whether or not my wife or I responded to your online poll, but we want to reply with a resounding YES!

We live in Olympia, and my wife and I disagree on the quality of the articles published in our local paper. I say our local paper is the second-worst paper published within the state of Washington; she says it’s the worst.

Our yearly rate last year for seven-day delivery was $317 for three or four days of “after the fact news to no local news at all,” and that was only because I threatened to quit the paper if I had to pay what they were asking most subscribers. This year they raised our rate to $421 for six-day delivery and Saturday on the Internet. I haven’t gone into negotiations with the money collector in the Philippines as of yet to determine if we continue with the paper; I don’t know what it will cost us.

Yes, I know we could probably do better with a different paper from a different city, but my wife wants the local ads and what local news there is, so it’s stay with this one with very poor coverage or one with no local ads.

I guess what I am trying to say here is the articles your student interns write are a definite complement to what is missed in our papers over here. Most of the time, if we get anything worthwhile it’s usually two or three days late or not at all. When I call to gently complain, I get the song and dance that “The meeting was still in progress when the paper was put to bed,” or “There were some facts I needed to get clarification on before I could get it in tomorrows edition.” Then we may never see it unless your interns figure it’s important to your subscribers ‘back home.’ Already we have picked up on a couple of things that got completely by us that we wouldn’t have seen if it hadn’t been in The Star.

I won’t go into them here as I have probably taken up more space than you normally allow your contributors, but I will give them to you upon request if you are interested in them. 

So yes, if at all possible, continue the funding for the WNPA [Olympia coverage]. We feel it’s definitely much needed and is something that will be very beneficial to most all your readers and will pay back in big bucks with many qualified and professional reporters on the ‘beat.’

One more thing. The next time we run into you, don’t get (my wife) started on what I would like to tell you in this post about the things that she feels would greatly improve our local paper, because you ain’t got enough time in the day to hear her out.

Jim Glick

Olympia