The Olympic Herald introduced itself to Clallam County readers in early January 2026 with the trappings of a newsroom: section pages, investigations branding, a donation portal. Within weeks, readers in a Port Angeles Reddit community had taken the site apart piece by piece, and, on every point that could later be checked against public records, the readers were right.
The thread, titled "Monetizing defamation blogs - OH,OWD," was posted to r/PortAngeles2 in approximately February 2026 by a user writing as u/CrabtrapAndPine. It drew 45 upvotes and 11 comments, modest numbers, but the substance was a methodical dismantling of the county's newest self-described newspaper.
"I was somewhat excited to see a new local paper being promoted in the other Port Angeles sub," the post opens, "but a bit of poking around and the ruse unravels rather quickly."
The author's first check was the domain itself. "The domain was purchased two months ago, and redirects to a substack blog," the post states. That check holds up. Verisign's RDAP record for olympicherald.com, queried by TROH this week, shows the domain was registered on December 26, 2025, at 01:11:15 UTC, roughly two months before the thread appeared, and twelve days before the site's first post, "Announcing The Olympic Herald," dated January 7, 2026.
The author's broader framing was opinion, and we attribute it as such: "Mimicking right wing influencer Nick Shirley's grift of blasting public sector employees with dubious allegations for fun and profit, OH appears to be a one-man op dedicated exclusively to re-tweeting defamation under only the thinnest pretense of passing for citizen journalism."
The "one-man op" observation is independently verifiable. A TROH review of the site's public archive found 425 posts, every one carrying the same byline: Anthony Tomashefsky.
The post also alleged a corporate structure behind the site, linking to a Bizapedia profile bearing Tomashefsky's name: "The [journalist] owns several LLCs for the purposes of monetizing content and shielding himself from personal liability for the publishing of libel." The characterization is the poster's own. The underlying observation, that multiple limited-liability companies are associated with Tomashefsky in public business records, is reflected in a Washington UCC financing statement, a New York judgment record, and a Clallam County eviction filing documented elsewhere in this series.
Two details in the original post deserve emphasis because they are about readers, not the site. The author told readers how to inspect the site without enriching it: "If you want to preview the content and decide for yourself, you can use this snapshot link to avoid your view being monetized by the publisher." And the author stated the motive plainly: "My goal here has been to increase media literacy."
In a follow-up comment, the author laid out what he called the formula of "domain-fronted substacks":
- "only run hit piece articles"
- "only run hit piece articles in blue states"
- "only run hit piece articles in blue states about rank and file or democratic personnel"
- "MAGA republicans and Trump appointees get a pass, every time"
- "Primarily buoyed by dark money and a few large donors dropping cash into a gofundme"
"The one assertion that is correct here," the author continued, "is that the first amendment offers incredible protections for the press, or even a bad actor presenting under the guise of being press. As such, it's practically impossible to prove libel up to the legal standard because these maga bloggers will simply feign ignorance as to the malicious intent behind their publications."
The thread was not unanimous, and the dissent is part of the record. One commenter answered the review with a shrug: "You can read that substack without paying... like most," adding, "welcome to the 1st amendment..." Another commenter, KRK-en, worried less about the site than about its readers: "I keep being appalled by the degree to which people are convinced by these 'articles.'" In a second comment, the same user wrote: "I have concerns that these types of 'masked crusaders' will deter justice- and ethically-oriented individuals from choosing to serve our public."
A pseudonymous Reddit thread is not evidence of anything by itself, and this publication would not treat it as such. What makes this thread notable, months later, is how it reads next to the public record. The domain claim matches the Verisign registry data. The "one-man op" claim matches the archive's single byline across 425 posts. And the author's central insinuation, that the site existed to attack specific people rather than to cover a county, sits next to a document the thread's readers could not yet see attached: a Clallam County Superior Court protection order, entered August 26, 2025, restraining the site's future author from stalking and harassing a Sequim man, and an October 21, 2025 memorandum opinion in which Judge W. Brent Basden wrote that "the record amply supports" the findings against him.
The community did not have the court file. It had a domain lookup and a reading of the site's own output. It arrived at the correct conclusion anyway.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.