Mr. Lloyd,

I made a poor choice in printing Mr. Stevens' editorial. Though you did not
say so in your e-mail, it was a grievous lapse of judgement borne from an
awkward situation: I do not understand the issues involved in the discovery
and exploration of the Kadiak, nor do I fully understand the conflict
between yourself and Mr. Stevens.

I hope that you do not think that my choice to print Mr. Stevens editorial
reflects any bias on my behalf; I did so thinking that he had a right to
respond to the article about Mr. Hess. However, I did not use proper caution
in my evaluation of Mr. Stevens' editorial. While he did have a right to
respond, he did not have a right to make accusations, and I was wrong to
print them.

It was unfortunate that the article on Mr. Hess' talk caused such anger; I
was happy to print it, and to be able to finally put your name in print as
the one who located the Kadiak; It seemed to me an innocuous article about a
speaker who came to talk about potential economic benefits to Kodiak.
However, I now understand that no articles we write on this topic can be
innocuous.

I realize tensions are running high because of this issue, and I have
unsuccessfully navigated the newspaper through those tensions. I hope that
in the future I can do a better job of doing so.

I would ask you to blame my decision not on malicious intent, but rather
naivete.

Of course I will print your rebuttal, as you have every right to respond.
You do not need, however, to constrain yourself to 742 words. If you need to
take more space, feel free to continue to 1,000 words. I realize that is not
much of an extension, but I do need to consider precedent and fairness.

Your request that I print your editorial as soon as possible is a valid one.
I will try to print it tomorrow (Tuesday). If you wish to make any changes
or updates, please do so.

Thank you for your patience,

Adam Lesh
Managing Editor
Kodiak Daily Mirror