Thoughts on the vandalized ‘welcome banner’
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
The banner at the Chamber of Commerce Visitor’s Center has generated discussion in the community — especially after it was slashed in two, repaired, and …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
The banner at the Chamber of Commerce Visitor’s Center has generated discussion in the community — especially after it was slashed in two, repaired, and …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
The Bonner County Human Rights Task Force sends its deepest sympathy to the victims of hate mail received recently by neighbors in our community. We …
By Brenda Hammond
Special to the Reader
What if Martin Luther King was here today — and asked to appear on one of the day-long news channels to comment on …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
Do you know what a “constitutional sheriff” is? And do you know if we have one? It’s important to go back a bit in order …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
“I have a dream … deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning …
By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
It was 71 years ago when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed by 48 different member countries of the United Nations, marking Dec. …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
The Bonner County Human Rights Task Force recently sent a questionnaire to all the candidates for city office, asking their positions on a number of …
By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad is no stranger to hate mail — or hateful robocalls, for that matter. Even before he won election in 2015, Rognstad …
By Brenda Hammond
Reader Contributor
Back in the day — when Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations, Vincent Bertollini, the “11th Hour Remnant Messenger,” and others, were trying to spread …
By Lyndsie Kiebert
Reader Staff Writer
Brenda Hammond sat in the balcony of the then Sandpoint High School gym in May 1991. She was there to hear members of the …
The Sandpoint Reader is our town's local, independent weekly newspaper. "Independent" means that the Reader is locally owned, in a partnership between Publisher Ben Olson and Keokee Co. Publishing, the media company owned by Chris Bessler that also publishes Sandpoint Magazine and Sandpoint Online. Sandpoint Reader LLC is a completely independent business unit; no big newspaper group or corporate conglomerate or billionaire owner dictates our editorial policy. And we want the news, opinion and lifestyle stories we report to be freely available to all interested readers - so unlike many other newspapers and media websites, we have NO PAYWALL on our website. The Reader relies wholly on the support of our valued advertisers, as well as readers who voluntarily contribute. Want to ensure that local, independent journalism survives in our town? You can help support the Reader for as little as $1.