Letter to the Editor: A reader’s guide to Courier-Herald letters

Published 11:00 am Tuesday, July 21, 2026

After reading The Courier-Herald’s opinion page for several months, I offer this “Readers Guide” for the benefit of new or infrequent readers, so that they can more easily assess the opinion letters published in the paper. When it comes to those letters, Caveat lector (let the reader beware).

Some letters to the editor focus on local civic matters and offer news or advice, but most are not plateau-centric and fall into one of two groups.

Group “A-Positive” letters are typically positive in content and civil in how they speak about others. These usually offer encouragement to readers, suggest worthwhile reading for newspaper readers, and are grounded in common sense. They sometimes quote the Bible when they think it’s relevant to their letter. These letters may state an alternative position from the weekly “In Focus” column (whose ongoing column inches may give it the appearance as being the opinion of The Courier-Herald, even if that’s not so). I try to follow the A-Positive approach in my periodic letters to the editor.

Group “D-Negative” letters are typically negative in content and tone. These regularly regurgitate unsubstantiated accusations and conspiracy theories. I recommend the Ronald Reagan response to those- just shake your head and say “There you go again.” But some of these letters degenerate into personal attacks on other letter writers, by mischaracterizing what the writers have said and with liberal use of personal insults and derogatory language. Generally, D-Negative writers don’t offer positive or practical solutions to whatever is bothering them and they are vehemently anti-Christian. A small number of D-Negative writers write with regularity and occupy a lot of newspaper space.

The A-Positive letters generally are constructive and seek to celebrate and preserve American constitutional institutions and Western culture. The D-Negative letters mostly wish the opposite. The A-Positive group seeks to clean-up and maintain our society while the D-Negative group scratches insults on public restroom walls. I hope that most readers of the Courier-Herald would view themselves as being A-Positive people.

Kristopher Galvin

Black Diamond