Linda Mowery-Denning Editor/Publisher

Letters from anonymous writers are usually tossed into the waste paper basket. However, a recent letter addressed to the publisher raises several points I’d like to address. Here are a few of our letter writer’s complaints and our responses:

• “There is no hospital admits or dismissals.”

A — That has been the case for several years. The Ellsworth County Medical Center stopped providing us with the names of patients when the federal government adopted HIPPA, a patient privacy law.

• No FREE new baby, birthday, wedding or anniversaries because of the cost. It used to be FREE.

A — And still is in most cases. Our policy for the past 20 years has been to publish baby and wedding announcements, birthdays 80 years and older and 50-year anniversaries at no charge. We ask that readers who are younger than 80 or celebrating an anniversary of fewer than 50 years pay a small fee.

• We need to see pictures of the new work on the grade school they did?

A — We have tracked the progress of the grade school project, publishing photos several times during construction. The week before school started the I-R had front page photos and a large story on the project.

This brings me to the most troublesome issue raised by our anonymous letter writer. He links the quality of the Independent-Reporter to the disappointing service and lack of local news that some of us worry has come to define the regional daily, the Salina Journal.

It’s true the I-R is printed by Salina, which no longer has a press and now sends its newspapers to Hutchinson. It’s also true that Gatehouse, the current owner of both newspapers, has a business model that, again, many of us think is doing great harm to our industry.

Every Tuesday since Gatehouse shut down the press at the Journal, the I-R staff has been at the Indy office, going through bags to make sure the labels and mail bags are correct. Many of us have worked 10- and 12-hour days to get the papers to their final destinations. Late hours have become the norm for our delivery drivers, who are responsible for taking newspapers to grocery stores, convenience stores, schools and racks across Ellsworth County.

Those are hours we could have used to cover more stories, take more photos, talk to more readers.

My point here is not to complain or claim we can’t do better because we can. But don’t judge all newspapers by the Journal. The I-R is partly owned by an out-of-state group; however, Morris Multimedia cares about the communities it serves and trusts in the ability of its editors and publishers to make their own decisions.

Unfortunately, Gatehouse owns so many newspapers, the value of those it doesn’t control — and therefore have much different operating policies — is buried under the news of the giant’s most recent layoffs.

We welcome feedback from our readers. And I often write this because it’s true — my door is always open.

As for our letter writer — I’d be happy to talk about this further. But he or she will have to call me. I don’t have a name or telephone number.