People should support print newspapers

The Randy Stapilus column (June 13) seemed particularly relevant as I muck through articles about various county commissioner skits; purportedly encouraging reports about the economy despite the cost of a bag of groceries; befuddling reports about protests, (supposed) genocide, and who the bad guys in Gaza really are; and court cases and litigations attached to both presidential candidates—each a newsworthy topic that any concerned citizen needs accurate information about to form an educated opinion.

But as everyone knows, and as Stapilus points out, ineluctably print news sources are dwindling.

Of course, the internet info highway provides all manner of stuff to read, but more and more many of those stories seem like they come from the same source, some even AI generated. And more and more many of them also seem to eschew objective reporting and instead employ some form of pseudo-reportage employing info-contorting, agenda-pushing, spectrum-leaning persuasion. Honest journalism seems to have combusted in the existential climate change calamity.

It used to be common folks like me could depend on a reliable, honest, free press for facts I could read, assess, then make an individual decision about what’s going on. Well, Marvin and I would like to see more trustworthy independent print newspapers maintain the vital free press; obviously, however, that ain’t happening, so while legislators spend tax dollars studying what folks already know, more people should support Rogue Valley print papers by subscribing to the RV Times and the Grants Pass Daily Courier (conspicuously missing from Stapilus’s column).

Martin Zottola / Grants Pass

Fact-checking Juneteenth history

In the June 15 edition of the Times, a reporter quoted someone as saying the Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves but many were kept slaves by withholding the word of their freedom from them. That’s not at all what happened. The emancipation only applied to the Confederate states and then only to the portions of said states not yet occupied by federal troops.

Slavery was still legal everywhere it had always been legal and the 13th Amendment didn’t pass until 1865 and didn’t go into effect until December 1865 (effectively January 1866). Now, very little of Texas was occupied, so when federal troops entered they told the slaves there that they were free; that’s what Juneteenth is about (i.e. Texas). Confederate states abolished slavery because they were required to ratify the 13th Amendment in order to be readmitted (even though Lincoln’s official position was that they’d never actually left).

If the emancipation freed all the slaves, there would have been no need for the 13th Amendment. Union slave states were not required to ratify, and Kentucky and Delaware never abolished slavery, so slavery was legal there — both Union states — until December 1865. Please fact-check your history before publishing it.

John W. McGlothlin / Medford