Two newspapers that publish Ann Coulter's syndicated column -- the Casper Star-Tribune of Wyoming and the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Nevada -- announced recently that they have no plans to drop Coulter's column, and Editor & Publisher quoted the editor of a third -- The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi -- saying that the paper would continue publishing Coulter. To date, eight newspapers have dropped Coulter's column since her March 2 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in which she referred to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a “faggot.”

Clark Walworth, the editor of the Casper Star-Tribune, published a signed editorial March 11 stating that his newspaper would continue to run Coulter's column despite “dozens” of messages* urging him to drop it. Walworth said that while he found Coulter's comment about Edwards “abhorrent,” he did not believe it merited her removal from his paper's op-ed pages. In explaining his decision, Walworth wrote, “In the America that I love, we don't silence disagreeable viewpoints.” He also noted that “lots of Wyoming conservatives relish” Coulter's diatribes.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal published a March 10 article announcing that it would not drop Coulter's column despite “more than 2,000 e-mails calling for the column's demise.” In an article headlined “R-J not joining trickle of papers dropping Coulter,” the newspaper said that editorial page editor John Kerr would continue to treat Coulter's columns “as he always has-by reading and running them on a case-by-case basis.”

Editor & Publisher reported on March 10 that The Clarion-Ledger would continue to run Coulter's column despite receiving “about 3,000 e-mails ... due to the MediaMatters.org listing.” The article quoted David Hampton, the editorial director of the paper, as saying that while he found Coulter's anti-gay slur “terrible, offensive, and out of line,” Coulter is “loved and hated by many people in our region.”

Two other newspapers, the Elko Daily Free Press of Nevada and the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois, have solicited reader feedback on whether or not to keep publishing Coulter. A March 9 Daily Free Press article reported that "[r]eaders have sent a clear message to the Elko Daily Free Press: Keep printing Ann Coulter's opinion column." The article quoted managing editor Jeff Mullins as saying, “As of this morning we had received nearly 60 phone calls or faxes, and about nine out of 10 wanted us to keep running Ann Coulter,” in response to the paper's call for reader comments on Coulter.

The State Journal-Register -- a newspaper that carries Ann Coulter's column but was not on Media Matters' original list -- published an editorial March 11 asking readers to weigh in on whether or not it should continue to publish Coulter. The editorial noted Media Matters' item on Coulter, saying, “MediaMatters [sic] missed us, thank goodness, so we have not been deluged with anti-Coulter e-mails from across the country.”

Despite calling Coulter's slur against Edwards “an idiotic, sophomoric statement,” the editorial expressed reluctance at pulling Coulter from the paper's roster of columnists without receiving more feedback from its readers first. “We would not have run Coulter if we did not believe she held value for at least some of our readers,” the editorial stated.

In the same article that discussed The Clarion-Ledger's decision to continue running Coulter's column, Editor & Publisher also reported that The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville would continue to run Coulter's column

Tips from Sven Stromann of the weblog Turn Tahoe Blue and reader L.W. contributed to this item. Thanks, and keep them coming.

This item originally stated that the Casper Star-Tribune would continue to run Coulter's column despite "'dozens' of messages from readers" urging Star-Tribune editor Clark Walworth to drop it. In fact, Walworth had written in his March 11 column that while he had received “dozens” of messages urging him to drop Coulter, “The enormous majority came from out of state, as part of a national campaign to purge Coulter from America's newspapers.”