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Scott used many years of on-the-ground experience and a great deal of research to make this presentation. It sure looks spot-on to me.

I've been hanging around newspapers one way or another for 75 years, including publishing my own at one time, but mostly with the local Leader. Conglomerating the free press, plus the financial hit to the print newspaper by the Internet has been eroding the public's right to know for some time. Ours is among the surviving fortunate unique areas, with our own weekly family-owned Leader and the Seattle Times, one of the few major dailies in the country that is still independent and family-owned.

Many major newspapers have folded because of the financial hit, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Selling out to a big-money conglomerate with a central production facility is the salvation of many smaller papers. Conglomeration is financially inspired and thus it should be no surprise that more and more newspapers wind up in conservative hands.

When I was still in harness at the Leader (before Scott's time) the Port Angeles paper already had a conservative bias. I never subscribed to it, never read it. I remember when it first spread into Jefferson County. Its Jefferson County edition didn't amount to much. As a daily, it just tried to "scoop" a few local news stories with short news bits lacking in depth. It utilized just one part-time reporter living in the local area. I guess it's after the advertising market big time these days. I don't envision it in any way being altruistically inspired to keep the local public informed.

The Leader now, also, with its on-line edition, publishes breaking news stories of major interest on a daily basis.

I've found its periodic critics to be largely grammatical nit-pickers of an apparent extreme conservative bent