I’ve been a journalist since 1975 and have owned a weekly newspaper in Fowlerville Michigan—my hometown—since 1985. There have been ebbs and flows of controversy, local and national, over those years.

Also, my coming-of-age years were in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s when the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, the counter-cultural revolution, and related issues caused much divisiveness.

But what’s been going on for the past few years, creating our current political-social-cultural landscape, is challenging to say the least.

I love writing commentary, which is how and why I ended up with a Substack site. As such, I’ve always welcomed ‘letters to the editor’ even when I haven’t agreed with the sentiments that were put forth.

But since the 2020 presidential campaign, they’ve become more an albatross around my neck. More and more of the writers are addressing national issues rather than local concerns and their political loyalty is front-and-center.

Their language has become harsh, reflecting much of the dialogue now going on, although dialogue is probably a polite word for the acrimony that’s evident as people talk past each other.

I believe in freedom of expression, but also embrace civil discourse. That’s made me more and more an outlier.

Navigating all of this as a newspaper editor has become a dicey business. But then no one twisted my arm and said '“You have to be a journalist.”

So regard this as a report, not a whine.

Steve Horton of the Substack site Horton’s Michigan Notebook