While in medical school, Gratzer was a regular contributor of opinion columns to National Post, wrote a weekly opinion column for the London Free Press and the Halifax Sunday Herald, and wrote columns on health care that appeared in several major newspapers and magazines, including the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen and Calgary Herald. A 1997 Gratzer column "Being a young conservative is nothing to apologize for" said "I am a conservative. This is somewhat unfortunate, as people don't seem to understand how anyone under 40 can be right-wing." A 1999 Gratzer column "Raising the minimum wage hurts the poor it hopes to help" lamented that even "two of Canada's three right-leaning governments have chosen to hike their minimum wages" and that "minimum wage earners are not underpaid but underproductive" Gratzer won $250 as fourth place runner-up in 1998–1999 and won $2,500 as first prize in the 1999–2000 Felix Morley Journalism Competition of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University for his newspaper columns.
