• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 18, 2022

A Washington-state email newsletter has apologized to readers, saying that a technology glitch made it look like it was endorsing a political candidate. 

“As an independent, nonprofit news organization, we do not make political endorsements,” wrote Gig Harbor Now Editor Vince Dice. “We have not and will not endorse in the 26^thDistrict State Senate or any political campaigns we will cover this fall or in the future.”

But Dice confessed that an item in the newsletter, “Letter to the editor: Young offers action and common sense,” looked like an endorsement because it was bylined “Gig Harbor Now Staff.”

Dice blamed the technology Gig Harbor Now utilizes. 

“This is a coding issue between our website and the software we use to generate our weekly newsletter. For staff members like myself, the byline field in the Weekly Newsflash item gets filled in properly.

That seems an easily solvable problem.

“Some may also be wondering why the letter to the editor was the first item at the top of our newsletter. Up until now, the newsletter was automatically generated, with the most recently posted item appearing first. Mr. Hartnett’s letter was the last item I posted to the website before the Newsflash’s deadline, so it automatically moved to the top of the newsletter.” 

There may be a lesson in this: that AI can’t solve everything, and that manual editing and scheduling may be essential for email newsletters. Surely the Gig Harbor Now staff would rather prioritize content in its newsletter.  

Maybe they already are: Dice says that the key words in the quote cited above is  "‘up until now.’ We’ll fix that early next week.”