Letter to the editor of “The Appalachian” newspaper

My genuine sympathies if you find this way too self-involved and/or repetitive by now — but really, what else am I supposed to do? I can’t find a public email address for Christa Price (which is slightly odd for any journalist, but whatever) so had to send the message below to the general “editor” inbox at “The Appalachian” newspaper, which is affiliated with Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.

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October 24, 2026

In an October 23 article entitled “Men need to hold each other accountable,” Christa Price, Associate Opinion Editor, writes: “Michael Tracey, a self-proclaimed journalist and political commentator, has been actively posting calls to action for the release of Doe’s personal information and other offensive comments on X under the username @mtracey.”

I never posted any general “call to action” — I have no idea what that even means. I solicited crowd-sourced information, which is something journalists do every single day on all manner of subjects, so I could verify Jane Doe’s identity using standard journalistic methods. Which I subsequently did, because she is the litigant in a massively consequential civil complaint. I have spelled out the public interest rationale for this decision ad nauseam now.

I also notice that I am characterized as a “self-proclaimed journalist,” in what appears to be an attempt at a snide little dig, as though the only basis for me to be described as a journalist is that I personally “self-proclaim” as one. While it’s technically true that I do “self-proclaim” as a journalist, I have also recently been “proclaimed” a journalist by the New Yorker, New York Times, Reuters, Wall Street Journal (in my own article), Washington Post, Hollywood Reporter, NewsNation, among many others. One can find my byline at places like the New York Daily News, where I was a regular columnist for many years, in which I am aptly described as “a journalist,” or the New York Post, where I am likewise described as a journalist, or The Nation, where I had my first journalism job, and am still described on my bio page as a “journalist.” When I’ve appeared on the BBC, or NPR, or SiriusXM, or Fox News, or the Piers Morgan show, or the South African national broadcaster — or countless others — I’ve been unremarkably described as a journalist. So I’m just wondering why Christa Price chose to identify me instead as a “self-proclaimed” journalist, as though I’m the only one who’s ever groundlessly tried to “proclaim” this.

Christa Price also writes:

He followed this post up with several more disrespectful comments and insults, accusing Doe of telling investigators “she supposedly WANTED to be raped” and she “deliberately decided to get herself gang-raped” as a “bizarre ploy to charge the guys with rape.”

These are characterized as rash “insults” I decided to fling out of nowhere, rather than observations expressly based on Jane Doe’s own words, as quoted in the New York Times, which were as follows:

“I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out, so my thought was, if I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,” it quotes her saying. “My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape.”

If you have a way to characterize this statement other than Jane Doe apparently telling investigators that she at some point made the decision to be knowingly subjected to rape, so that the alleged perpetrators “could be charged with rape,” I would very much like to hear it. Why would you omit the actual quote from Jane Doe that I was plainly referencing, and instead make me out to be some kind of barbarian, when I was literally referring to a very specific quote, stated by her directly, in which she describes her own thinking and motives? Does it really not strike you as at least worth noting that according to Jane Doe herself, there came a point when she decided that rather than extricate herself from a situation in which she could purportedly be raped, she instead consciously chose to enable herself to be raped, so that the purported offenders “could be charged with rape”? SHE is the one who said that — not me.

I was also misleadingly quoted here:

Tracey went on to write he knows “the seven guys have been brutally harassed and faced awful consequences.”

Why on earth would you exclude the previous sentence, which was my whole basis for making this remark about the harassment of the seven defendants? I wrote: “Please do not harass her, her family, or anyone else associated with her. I’m serious. I wish her no harm. I feel bad for her in a way.”

You also excluded the sentences immediately FOLLOWING the partial quote you strangely decided to excerpt, in which I wrote that “I primarily blame the sleazebag plaintiff’s lawyers for this debacle of an outcome. Sure, Jane Doe has agency in the matter. But I don’t wish to impugn her personally. I honestly wish her the best. I don’t think this should define the rest of her life.”

Did you exclude this obviously crucial before-and-after context because to include it would’ve disrupted the condemnatory narrative you were trying to cobble together?

I would be happy to speak to Christa Price, or anyone else at your publication, about this directly.

Best,

Michael Tracey

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