Submission by Concerned Citizen
Are attempts being made to silence the Grand Chute Gazette Newspaper? Is freedom of the press and freedom of speech being attacked? Is there an organized effort by some to silence the voice of this publication?
Concern has risen that since the publication of the November 2025 issue, which contained an article titled “A Town Divided: Inside Grand Chute’s Political Firestorm” that a faction of individuals upset that the article identified Grand Chute Town Board Supervisor, Brad Gehring, as leading an effort to politically and personally harm former Town Board Member, Ron Wolff, have been working to harm this newspaper as well.
In support of this concern, consider the following events that have occurred.
Numerous Gazette advertisers reported being contacted by a local female of Grand Chute, who asked them to stop advertising with the Gazette. She threatened a boycott of businesses that failed to comply to her demand. The Gazette receives its operating revenue solely from its advertisers and followed those actions with a ‘Cease and Desist’ to that individual.
The Town of Grand Chute filed a ‘Cease and Desist’ Order dated November 21, 2025 against the Gazette for occasionally including the Grand Chute logo and tagline, “Experience Better” with Grand Chute a related content. Neither the logo or tagline are copyrighted. Other news sources, which have also used the logo and tagline in their editorial do not appear to have been called out by the Town of Grand Chute.
Town of Grand Chute officials also began to complain that the name “Grand Chute Gazette” has caused confusion about whether this newspaper is a Town publication. Town officials made this complaint despite the fact it is common for newspapers to have a name associated with communities they serve. Examples include the Appleton Post-Crescent, Green Bay Press Gazette, Oshkosh Northwestern, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, etc.
On November 21, 2025, Post-Crescent writer, Duke Behnke wrote an article in response to a question posed concerning the Gazette by an unnamed Post-Crescent reader. The unnamed reader opined that the November Gazette article, ‘A Town Divided: Inside Grand Chute’s Political Firestorm’, “spins a biased story about former Grand Chute Supervisor, Ron Wolff, while trashing the integrity of several others.” It called out concern about the Grand Chute Gazette’s name, and it included a quote by Supervisor Gehring.
The article alludes to be a damage control effort by Behnke and Gehring, as there seems to be a close relationship between the two. Over the past four years, Behnke has been the featured writer who has written critically about former Grand Chute Supervisors and positively about Gehring.
The Grand Chute Gazette was not created to tell readers what to think, but to give readers a variety of articles, and some articles to challenge readers in what has been presented in other resources. The following link was included in the November issue (and QR Code option) enables readers to determine for themselves whether the article presented in the November issue was biased or based on facts from depositions.
PUT LINK AND QR CODE
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