PORT ANGELES — Following more than 40 years in community journalism, Paul Gottlieb said one of the stories with the greatest impact in his career involved barriers put on the Eighth Street bridges to prevent suicide.
Gottlieb, who retired from Peninsula Daily News in 2022 after 24 years with the newspaper, provided his insight Wednesday during the weekly Coffee with Colleen meeting hosted on the Zoom platform by the Clallam County Economic Development Council.
“As a reporter, you want the standard feeling that, if you’re going to write stories, you want to make a difference,” Gottlieb told the show’s host, Colleen McAleer, the executive director of the Clallam County EDC.
One of those moments was with the Eighth Street bridges, which were completed in February 2009 with 4-foot, 6-inch-high railings.
But those barriers weren’t enough. Eight people died by suicide after they jumped over those railings and fell from the 100-foot-tall spans, Gottlieb wrote.
The Port Angeles City Council twice rejected taller barriers because they were cited as too expensive. In 2014, the council opted for signs with a suicide hotline phone number after a third person fell to their death in a five-year span.
Finally, new barriers were installed in September 2018. They range from 8 feet, 8 inches tall to 10 feet, 7 inches tall because of curved chain-link fencing with spikes at the top.
It was a change that “protected people from getting the idea that they wanted to die by suicide,” Gottlieb said.
“Those barriers were built, and no one has died by suicide since then,” he said of the bridges.
The project cost $771,000, and funding included $124,000 in community funds made up of individual donations plus $100,000 from the John David Crow family and $10,000 from First Fed. An additional $350,000 came from state funding.
“Cherie Kidd, who was mayor and a (Port Angeles) city council member, that’s one of her great lasting legacies, the forces she marshaled to get people to donate to that,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb grew up in New Jersey and started his journalism career as a columnist for his high school newspaper.
“When I was in high school, girls could not wear pants. They had to wear dresses,” he said.
“A highlight of my time was writing a column advocating for girls to wear pants.
“It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Gottlieb grew up in the 1970s, so he said he wrote a lot about the Vietnam War and civil rights.
“They had so many letters (to the editor) to my columns that they called the letters section ‘Potshots at Paul,’” he said.
Gottlieb attended Rutgers University in New Jersey and went to graduate school at Northwestern outside of Chicago before he got his first community journalism job in Milton-Freewater, Ore., in 1980.
Eventually, his travels led him to newspapers in Astoria, Ore., and the San Juan Islands, with stops in Enumclaw and Gig Harbor before he arrived in Port Angeles in 1998.
“Sound Publishing bought many of the papers that I worked for and basically kept them alive,” he said.
Another major story Gottlieb covered during his time at Peninsula Daily News was the fluoridation issue. He recalled former Port Angeles Mayor Patrick Downie, a fluoridation proponent, switching his vote in August 2016 to take the city beyond an extended period of division.
“He was amazing,” Gottlieb said. “He really loved the community.
“He famously changed his vote when the whole fluoride issue was tearing the community apart.”
Gottlieb, who will author a special voters guide for Peninsula Daily News this October, also spoke about life as a reporter.
“People really treasure their local paper, and thank goodness we still have a local paper,” he said.
________
Editor Brian McLean can be reached by email at brian.mclean@peninsuladailynews.com.
