I want to commend the Summit Daily for its handling of letters to the editor. When I moved here, I thought it was just an advertising paper with useful local news items and a mission to promote citizen bonding and a sense of community among our extended neighbors. Then my opinion changed (wait for the ending).

This came in no small part from the letters to the editor, the opinion pieces that alternated between extreme left views and extreme right views and the biting political cartoons. My first thought was, “Why are they politicizing a local community paper, printing political cartoons that ‘preach to the choir’ on one hand and ‘tick-off’ the other half of the population?” How does this help advertising? Then there was someone who sent in a scathing letter about someone running downtown without a mask. Now, she could have encouraged people not to do that and admonish the runner to follow the rules. Instead, she went into a tirade, spewing vitriol implying that runner deserved to die — painfully perhaps — and would probably have the moral equivalent of Hitler, who seems to come up a lot lately. That was when I stopped reading the Summit Daily.

Now the encouraging part: I now realize that the Daily is essentially a traditional regional newspaper, which attempts to be balanced, interview people from all walks of life and wants to be a vehicle for honest political exchange (God knows we need that). You are fair in your publication of letters of all political viewpoints without censorship (rare today). You carefully research the facts in the letters and edit spelling mistakes without altering the core message. Keep up the good work! I also noticed you have not printed political cartoons lately. Let’s keep it that way.