📰 Inside CDN 03/16/26

From the editor’s desk: Very few “slow weeks” ever occur in your local newsroom.

But for me, the past one was a true banger, as the office youth like to say.

It culminated Friday in a couple things readers might have found unusual: A full-page advertisement in CDN from 400 local citizens and health officials calling for a reversal of a layoff by PeaceHealth, the dominant local health care provider. And a column by me about what I think amounts to long-term community relations malpractice, here and elsewhere, by the same organization.

These were coincidental and mostly unrelated, but I played a role in both. I’ll have more to say in coming weeks about the open letter; paid political advertising and paid content in CDN is on my "Inside CDN" get-to list. But for now, let’s deal with the latter.

As executive editor, I wear various hats at CDN. My primary role is to manage our newsroom, our news content, and our news staff. It’s a great job that comes with a lot of responsibility. But in a four-decade daily news career that has taken me around the globe, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

Another key role is communicating with the public, via columns and newsletters like this.

In addition: I edit our Opinion and letters section and most weeks, write a Friday personal column. This opinion piece varies in content and ... ahem, style. I try to write in the tradition of columnists at the late, great metro dailies (where mine actually started, a couple decades ago at The Seattle Times). To wit: Sometimes it’s meant to purely entertain, sometimes to cajole, often to make a point through satire (an age-old, effective journalistic tradition that predates our Constitution).

In more rare instances, I use the privilege of the column space to offer what I hope is an educated, pointed opinion, calling out key players in civic affairs on occasions when it seems called for.

I’ve done that here on numerous occasions, singling out the Board of Trustees at Western Washington University, the Bellingham School District (several times), the Bellingham Police Department, the Sedro-Woolley Police Department and others.

What’s my threshold for engagement? It's a fairly high bar: I speak out when some public action or inaction rises to the level of feeling either egregiously wrong or harmful to the public good.

Such was the case this week, in a column I've let simmer for a long time about apparent institutional arrogance at PeaceHealth.

I’ll let that column, available outside our paywall, speak for itself. What I’ll add here is that columns such as this one are exclusively my own opinion, not the position of our newsroom, nor our ownership, which grants me the privilege of making such content decisions on my own. That editorial freedom, historically a key tenet of truly independent journalism, sadly is a rare and treasured thing these days.

I like to think last week’s opinion was a reasoned one, informed not only by managing five years of news flow about PeaceHealth here, but my own dealings with the organization, in pre-CDN days, as a Seattle Times reporter. Short take: They seem to have made little progress in the past half decade.

I’m comfortable with this role and value the ability to draw on my own reporting experience, and longtime residence here, to issue challenges to local institutions in a public way. My take typically is also influenced heavily by what I hear from readers. We’ll talk more about this as time goes on. If you have thoughts in the meantime, send them my way.

Last October, before the eventful election that returned Donald J. Trump to the White House, travel guru and citizen of the world Rick Steves visited the 'Ham to give a sold-out, provocative presentation about the dangers of fascism, using Western Europe’s 20th-century experience as a model.

In hindsight, his perspective was prescient, based on the inarguably authoritarian turn America’s government has taken since.

We’re thrilled that Steves has agreed to come our way again for a 7 p.m. April 11 discussion about travel, geopolitics, and in essence, what it means to be an American today in rapidly evolving political times. I was impressed with his candor and depth of knowledge during his last appearance, and look forward to picking up that conversation where we left it last fall.

Bonus: The venue for this talk is one of my favorite places in the world: The Mount Baker Theatre. Tickets are on sale at mountbakertheatre.com and are reportedly going fast. The evening will include a presentation by Steves, an interview session with yours truly, and questions from our audience. We hope to see a lot of you there. Proceeds from the event will help fund independent local journalism.

I asked about imposing a quota (one a month?) on prolific letter writers, some of whom send more than one missive nearly every week. The overwhelming response by close to 200 readers: "Depends on content: Use your best editor's-hat judgment."

Thank you, and we shall. (See how easy it is to set policy in a locally owned newsroom?)

Kidding, sort of. But the response to that little query was impressive.

Some readers went farther than simply clicking an answer. A few of my favorite extended comments:

"Amazing range and depth of knowledge of your readers. But honestly, some frequent flyers are so prolific that the omission of their weekly tirade would encourage me to call 911 for a wellness check!"

"Citizen journalism can be powerful, but moderation is more powerful."

"Don't let a frequent, verbose letter writer push others aside. No artificial quotas, but avoid letting the few but prolific letter geeks dominate, to the exclusion of infrequent but fresh, valid, and nuanced others."

"I'm looking at you, Michael Waite!"

Thanks for reading this weekly missive and supporting your local newsroom. It matters.

Rick Steves of Edmonds has long been America's foremost advocate of international travel as an act of individual diplomacy. But current circumstances likely make many Americans reluctant to take to the skies.

PeaceHealth, corporate website: "Our mission, vision and values."

Cameron Crowe: "The Uncool: A memoir." (Hardback, Simon & Schuster/Avid Reader Press, 2025) Slam-dunk birthday gift from my wife; moves to top of stack.

Eugene-Springfield Lookout: Emergency doctors ask for state to review PeaceHealth choice of ApolloMD.

Reprise Records, vinyl, 1975: "Pieces of the Sky," by Emmylou Harris, perennially relevant for these lines by songwriter Danny Flowers:

How would you feel
If the world was falling apart around you
Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor's yard, but not on you?
Wouldn't you feel just a little bit funny
Thinking maybe there's somethin' you ought to do