Reflections on 'A karmic warning from Rocky Balboa'

It's the Midweek Extra Edition of The UPSTATE AMERICAN, with thoughts for writers

One more thing is worth saying in the aftermath of the big news about Fox. (Image from Unsplash)

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You know what the big difference is between writing a direct-to-reader essay, like The UPSTATE AMERICAN, and writing opinion pieces for newspapers, which I did during my roughly 30 years leading newsrooms? It’s that when you are your own publisher, as I am now, you can write to your conscience, without worrying that you ought not to offend anybody connected to delivering your paycheck.

Mind you, nobody ever held me back from expressing my opinion during my years as a newspaper editor, because I worked for honorable publishers. But I felt acutely in those years that I needed to speak to a whole community, and that I was representing the platforms that published my work. So I self-edited. It’s not that the columnists and editorialists you read in mainstream publications don’t write what they believe to be true, but they probably temper the tone and language of even their most opinionated work, as I did, in an earnest and honest effort to speak to readers with wide-ranging views.