As a long-term subscriber of the Hutchinson Leader, I am thankful for having a local community paper to share news, events and opinions. That said, I feel obligated to report a trend of errors with letters to the editor. These errors really undermine the understandability and credibility of the articles that opinion writers submit.
For example, I was making a point in my letter of June 12, when I stated: “3 of the 5 McLeod Commissioners (The Hutchinson Commissioners) voted to agree to the county paying all maintenance costs for 20 years.” This is what was published: “three of the five commissioners, including commissioners representing Hutchinson.” This rewording undermined my point that it was only the Hutchinson commissioners that voted to pay for all these trail costs.
Another example was in my paid election letter on July 22, 2020, where I stated: “five statewide Republican candidates earned 15% to 21% more votes from CD7 voters than Dave Hughes did.” The Leader published this as: “Republican candidates earned 1521 percent to 21 percent more.” This publishing error really destroys the carefully worded argument that I was trying to make.
Lastly, Dave Sebesta sent in his own opinion letter that was published on July 29. I verified with Mr. Sebesta that his submitted last sentence stated: “May your votes be counted.” Then the paper printed “May your voted by counted.”
I do appreciate it when the Leader contacts me to suggest changes or to fix errors before changing my letters to the editor. However, after paying $30, I especially insist that every word be kept the same because I literally paid for these exact words to be published as submitted.
Hutchinson Leader staff: Please take your time to publish the opinion letters as submitted unless you obtain the author's permission to change the words.
