Editorial of June 26, 2025

What You Read Is What We Get

A couple weeks ago, a subscriber called to cancel her AllOtsego subscription. When asked why, she responded, “Well, we like reading the news, and we like your website, but you’re just becoming too left-leaning.” Although at first surprising—as we work very hard to remain objective in our reporting—we understood.

While it is true that we strive to provide balanced, fact-based news coverage, our content has, indeed, been leaning to the left of late. Our motto since September 2022 has been, and continues to be, “putting the community back into the newspaper.” We encourage submissions from our readers of opinion pieces, letters to the editor, guest columns and the like. This is your newspaper when all is said and done, and we want your voices to be heard.

To that end, we are seeing our goal of community participation come to fruition. Take our “Letters to the Editor” section, for instance. From Election Day last November to the end of 2024, we published 35 letters. Four of those letters expressed negative opinions of president-elect Trump, while one was cautiously optimistic. The rest focused primarily on topics specifically of local concern. From January 1, 2025 through our issues of June 19, we published 109 letters. Of those, 58 were staunchly opposed to the current administration for various reasons. Twelve of the 109 letters, all written by the same individual, praised Trump’s leadership and trajectory for the nation.

So, it is understandable that the reader who called to cancel perceives our website, and our newspapers, to be left-leaning. After all, 54 percent of the letters to the editor published this year have been anti-Trump and largely anti-Republican. Add to this our coverage of the formation of several Indivisible groups throughout the county and their peaceful rallies in protest of the Trump administration over the last three months, and a number of anti-Trump opinion pieces, and it does, indeed, appear that our publications have taken a turn to the left. In fact, we were lambasted last week for a front page account of the “No Kings Day” rally in Oneonta, which one reader insisted was “not news.” We respectfully replied that any event drawing more than 1,200 people—whether you agree with it or not—is most definitely news.

We are publishing the views and opinions of the folks who take the time to write them. It’s as simple as that. Yes, we do state a position of our own from time to time—in our editorials, where our opinion belongs. And frankly, even our editorials are generally geared toward finding a middle ground both sides of the aisle can embrace. Which, by the way, seems only to inflame the left, if their response is any indication. Go figure.

So, no, we are not left-leaning. But the letter writers and op-ed contributors definitely are. This begs the question: Why are we hearing essentially nothing from the right? We welcome your thoughts as well, and would devote space to your opinions. But, as the saying goes, “you don’t write, you don’t call…” Why is that?

Is this in parallel to mid-term elections, during which voters from the party currently in power often don’t bother to show up? Because they’re happy with the way things are, and taking time out of their busy day to vote—or, in this case to write—seems like a waste of time? Maybe. Is it because they’re not happy with the way things are going and don’t want to talk about it? Could be. Or maybe it’s because, as one longtime Republican recently told us, he and his wife can’t even attend a cocktail party without being verbally attacked by their friends and neighbors. Hmm.

Whatever the reason, we recognize that there are voices and perspectives missing from our pages. We are, and will continue to be, bipartisan in our coverage of the news. That’s our job. We will continue to try to find common ground in our editorials. That’s our position. We’re not “leaning” in either direction. But our readers most certainly are—the ones we’re hearing from, anyway. So if there are those of you who disagree with what appears to be a rising tide, we invite you to make your voices heard. That’s what we’re here for.

Until then, what you read is what we get. By the way. That reader who was going to unsubscribe? She gets it, and she’s still with us. But she hasn’t submitted a letter. Yet.