Well, we did and we didn't

Seth Boyes - News Editor

You likely don't know it dear reader, but there was a good bit of behind-the-scenes hubbub after State Rep. Wills sent out his Feb. 16 newsletter. I'm sure many dedicated readers already know those newsletters often appear as columns on the opinion page of the Dickinson County News – because we feel it's important our readers know what their legislators are saying. And Rep. Wills definitely had some things to say this week as he discussed school library books which may contain explicit content.

Now, believe it or not, the portion of Rep. Wills' column which gave me the most pause wasn't the excerpt from the novel "Push" he chose to quote. Rather it was the few sentences that came before that.

"I debated about sharing this because I know the newspapers will not publish it, but why?," Wills wrote. "If it is good enough for the schools, isn’t it good enough for the papers?"

There's nothing wrong with asking a question of course – hard for a person whose work revolves around asking questions to say otherwise – questions spur discussion. And, putting aside the major differences between running a newspaper and running a library, the claim that, "I know the newspapers will not publish it," presented us with an unusual situation — almost a paradox.

Whether the paper omitted the excerpt or included it, readers could interpret the newspaper's decision as an official position on the broader topic and as an attempt to exert influence over Wills' sharing of his views with the community. To put it another way, striking the passage from print might seem like we're agreeing with or even supporting Rep. Wills' position, while taking the passage to press — dirty words and all — might look like we're countering or even outright opposing Rep. Wills' point.

Neither would have been true.

As I said before, the whole point of printing legislative columns is so our readers know what their lawmakers are saying. I've corrected punctuation and capitalization errors for various elected officials before press, but this was something entirely different. And taking either of the obvious options — keeping the excerpt in or out — would have been counter productive in some way to the opinion page's purpose.

So we took a third option and didn't quite do either — not really — in an attempt to land somewhere in the middle.

As you'll note elsewhere on this week's opinion page, the excerpt in question was omitted in hard copy only, but it was printed in full online.

One newspaper, two mediums — we published it and yet we didn't.

Our publisher Brad Hicks will fill you in a bit more at the top of Wills' column if you're interested.

But our commitment to providing fair and balanced comment on the topic didn't end there.

Rep. Wills made a claim — about 20 little words — telling constituents across Iowa House District 10 that Spirit Lake Schools had about a dozen books he's concerned about.

Somewhat ironically, it was almost a year ago that we at the DCN discussed what to do in almost this exact hypothetical situation. We generally agreed that if someone were to submit something like a Letter to the Editor taking issue with a controversial book in a local library, the responsible thing to do as a newspaper would be to at least call the library and confirm that book is indeed in the collection before we print anything based on that premise.

Obviously, we didn't foresee the someone in that scenario being a state lawmaker, but we held to the standard nonetheless — we reached out to Spirit Lake Schools and invited the district to comment. It took a few days to hear back — not an uncommon thing with touchy subjects — and, in the meantime, Rep. Wills sent out an update — a bit more on the uncommon side — which you can see elsewhere on this page.

Now, dear reader, my point in telling you all of this isn't to just pop the hood and let you see all the moving parts in a situation like this — scratch that … that's exactly the point.

You ought to know your local newspaper is doing its best to be fair and balanced for your benefit. Sometimes people don't want to talk when we reach out, and sometimes questions go unanswered, but that doesn't mean they aren't being asked. And they're being asked so you — our community — can have the most complete picture possible.

And that applies even here on page four.