Pedes, This is a sincere request for some crowd sourcing from those with small town papers. A guy "James L Hartley" almost every week is in our small hometown paper (in missouri) with hardcore leftist propaganda in the opinion section, he mostly attacks local conservative politicians. The thing is no one knows who he is. Do any of you have a person like this in your local small town papers?

A local alderman published a column in our hometown paper "Confused: storming of the US Capitol worse than 9/11" he calls it a coup worse than 9/11 and talks about people intentionally murdering Sicknick, ANTIFA being good, etc. I wrote back in an opinion piece pointing out things like the lack of guns used, minimal damage, provocateur's, ANTIFA's record, etc and that people there and me legitimately believe the election was unfair and were seeking transparency. I stated that I hoped deaths were investigated fairly.

The next week, James L Hartley, publishes a piece calling me out by my first and last name as being complicit with rioting, murder and treason, dishonest, etc, etc. I've lived in the town for 4 yrs and have two businesses struggling to get going, my customer base is the town, so he can definitely damage me. This is defamation. I couldn't find who he was so I went to the local paper today and said I wanted to meet with Hartley, would they mediate a meeting (they won't release his contact info). They haven't responded so far.

So what I'm wondering is if this is really a fellow citizen or if it is a funded political operation where leftists spam small rural opinion sections pretending to be local citizens. Or maybe even pay papers for column space that pretends to be opinion without labeling it as a funded article.

Any observations from others with their small town papers would be appreciated. Thank you.