“Why the Sounder reports on crime,” the title of your editorial, is not the real question. Everybody knows ‘why’ you report on crime. What the issue is, as I see it, and which I have written to you about before, is the “way” you do it. The piece about Mr. Hogle, would have been more acceptable, as well as journalistically mature, had you simply written the facts that we, the community are required to know. You, once again, (and I refer to the clumsy and sensational manner in which you wrote about Sarah Coffelt, previously), have written about this member of the Orcas community with unnecessary, and condemning sensationalism. A statement of the actual facts, without playing upon the very reactivating nature of this case, is what we, as readers, need, nothing more. He has not been tried, and you have, essentially, tried him and found him guilty. Whatever the upshot of this case is, we have, in our community, a tragedy, and you have dealt with it, in my opinion, with utter lack of sensitivity, or compassion for that aspect of it.

Jane Alden

Orcas Island