Before I left on vacation I had several conversations in the newsroom and with colleagues at larger organizations about the role of the newspaper in the community. We’d had several comments from government officials, elected and not, that the newspaper worked — or should work — “in partnership” with the government.

I had to tell them I disagreed. No, the newspaper is not in partnership with the government any more than it is with the Department of Education or the Port of Port Townsend or the business community or the nonprofit sector or any other element of our community. Our goal is to cover all of those groups, our creative community, and much more.

Our partnership is with the public.

We did not invent this concept. The role of the press is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It has continued to evolve in the 233 years since the First Amendment was ratified. The press — professional news media, in today’s vernacular — has played an outsized role in the longevity of this nation. We may be a small paper, but our commitments to independence and to standards-based journalism are large. I’ve written about that before (Journalism 101, standards of conduct, and ‘The Yellow Kid,’ Oct. 9) and will again.

These aren’t easy times for our industry. A national figure, when aggressively and accurately covered by professional news media, so routinely attacks the press that no one even blinks any more. Calling professional news media “fake news,” or “the enemy of the people,” has taken a toll. This year there have been 76 assaults on journalists, up from 45 in 2023, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) that documents aggressions against the press in the United States.

Rhetorical attacks continue to trickle down. It doesn’t seem to matter if the reporting comes with clearly identified sources and provides space for rebuttal, or if the organization has worked to give more than 24 hours advance notice that a story is in the works. News organizations don’t need a reason to write about anything, thanks to the First Amendment.

Even coverage that has been prompted by timely and specific events can have elected officials come out with loaded rhetoric while others remain silent.

Considering criticism aimed at us is part of our job. Indeed, we go out of our way to publish it. At the same time, specifics matter. Amorphous accusations of “inflammatory innuendo, gossip, hearsay, and misinformation” without detail has the same echo of the vacuous “fake news.”

The Leader is faring better than many of our peers, thanks to you. We’re growing both in circulation — up 10% from 2023 — and in staffing. (Welcome to Mallory Kruml, who has joined us as a Murrow News Fellow from Washington State University. She is covering local government among other things. And, big shout out to marketing and public relations professionals who have invited her in for tours and such to better understand your parts of the community.)

We’re proud of the work we’re doing, and continue to work to be better this week than we were last.

But we answer to you, readers. What do you think? What do you want to see more of or less of in these pages? Are we being fair/unfair? Should we be more or less thorough in covering elected officials?  Feel free to reach out to me personally with the subject headline FEEDBACK.

Meredith Jordan can be reached at editor@PTLeader.com.