Publishers, owners starting to call the shots
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When I became editor of The Post-Star, Mark Mahoney reminded me in those early months that I had a vote on editorials, he had a vote and the publisher had a million votes.
Owners get a billion votes.
Thankfully, neither publishers nor owners exercised that prerogative over the years. People are often surprised when I tell them that.
When the Environmental Protection Agency was considering dredging the Hudson River years ago, Mark and I wanted to write an editorial endorsing. Publisher Jim Marshall was against it, so the newspaper took a stand against it.
You win some, you lose some I remembered thinking at the time.
Mark refused to write the editorial, so Jim wrote it.
We got over it. We moved on.
But what is happening at The Washington Post is unprecedented in recent newspaper history.
All newspaper publishers and owners probably put their thumb on the scale to a degree from time to time, but a century ago it was even worse with newspaper owners often campaigning for the candidates of their choice. Most times had Republican and Democratic-leaning newspapers to serve the electorate.
The past 50 years - believe it or not - has probably been some of the least partisan times in newspaper history. But that may be coming to an end.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's billionaire owner, rescued The Washington Post when it was in tough financial shape, but he has inserted himself into the political fray twice in the past six months.
First, he killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, then this past week he informed the editorial page editor there would only be editorials on "personal freedoms" and "free markets" and they would not offer up opposing viewpoints.
“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views," Bezos wrote on X. "Today, the internet does that job.”
The newspaper had been publishing viewpoints from across the political spectrum.
Perhaps the more important question is whether this is just the beginning.
We are seeing lots of people in media and government resigning rather than do a job that violates their moral compass. Perhaps, that is the intent.
What I remind readers is that these journalist are passionate about their craft and often leave dream jobs to follow their conscience.
Back in 2019, Post-Star reporter Kathleen Moore was investigating Glens Falls Hospital finances after it lost millions of dollars when a new billing system failed to function properly.
We had an interim publisher at The Post-Star at the time who had no journalism experience. The new publisher started scrutinizing our copy on the hospital stories, which was his right, but then he demanded changes to the copy, saying our coverage had gotten too personal.
I chronicled it all in Chapter 28 of The Last American Newspaper. It was a difficult time for all of us at the newspaper.
After deleting one paragraph about the hospital's refusal to answer questions from the newspaper, Projects Editor Will Doolittle confronted the publisher and told him if the hospital coverage was compromised in any way, he would resign immediately.
Imagine that.
Just a year earlier, Will's wife had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and forced to retire. He was in no position to lose his job, yet he stood up for what was right. I was always proud that he stood up to the publisher and a little ashamed that I did not join him.
Not long after that when faced with layoffs, that same publisher told me that Will Doolittle would be laid off.
It sounded personal to me.
I went to the vice president of news at corporate and informed him that because of Will and Bella's work on The Alzheimer's Chronicles podcast, they had been named Lee's "Spirit Award" winner the year before.
When the final list came out, Will Doolittle's name was no longer on it.
Over the course of my 40 years in community journalism, this was my experience with my dedicated colleagues.
There are a lot of heroes out there in the journalism world.
And a lot of them are being forced to resign these days.
Invest in journalism
You need to support journalism more than ever for it to survive. If you are looking for a specific outlet, you can't go wrong with a donation to ProPublica.
It's the organization that investigated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas paid vacations by a billionaire benefactor and failed to report it.
For the past couple weeks, ProPublica's posts has been one great story after another. On Wednesday, it reported how cuts to the IRS will cost the federal government significant revenues.
Consider this from the article:
Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12, depending on how much income the taxpayer declared. A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy.
ProPublica went on to report the IRS hires hundreds of specialists who use their technical expertise to do audits on big companies. These audits on complex tax returns often produce as much as a billion dollars in extra revenue. These specialists are in high demand and many are being laid off.
It's a great story about how the IRS goes after the big fish and not the little fish like most of us.
Living in infamy
The Rockwell Falls Public Library in Lake Luzerne seems destined to live in infamy for the calamity caused over a Drag Queen reading event that forced protests from residents, resignations from staff and the eventual closing of the library.
Neil Herr continues to develop a musical satire of those events and plans on doing several workshop performances. The whole saga is chronicled in a North Country Public Radio report this week.
I hope at least one performance is scheduled for Lake Luzerne Central School.
Check out the North Country Public Radito story:
Essential fact-checking
We've reached the point where reading PolitiFact daily is necessary to be a good citizen in our nation.
If it is not part of your daily routine, make it one.
Politifact, operated by the respected Poynter Institute, fact-checked the entire 1 hour and 40 minutes of Trump's State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
There were lots of lies, half-truths and many other statements that needed additional context that was provided by PolitiFact.
Make PolitiFact part of your daily routine.
Love Ukraine
The North Country Light Brigade was at it again with another light display from the bike path overpass on Quaker Road in Queensbury.
The group claims to have at its disposal all 26 letters of the alphabet to give it versatility with its messages.
Last week, it added one more - a heart - with the message "Heart Ukraine."
Indivisible newsletter
Last month more than 100 people gathered in the basement of Crandall Library concerned about what was about to happen to their country. It was the beginning of something that day.
Since then, members have been involved in protests, including a big one this past week in Albany, while more are being organized for the future.
For all the updates of what INDIVISIBLE ADK/Saratoga is up to check on their weekly newsletter. You can sign up for it by emailing a request here: indivisibleadksaratoga@gmail.com.
Parade fallout
On Fat Tuesday - the final day of Mardi Gras - the smiles were briefly erased from the large crowds along St. Charles Street in New Orleans because of something they saw.
There were several Tesla Cybertrucks positioned between floats.
Apparently, the vehicles have become a symbol of much disdain because of the actions of Tesla's owner Elon Musk.
As the trucks crawled by, they were bombarded by beads, barbs and boos from the usually easy-going parade-goers.
Inside the trucks were parade officials and not representatives of Tesla.
Things got so bad that one-by-one, the Tesla vehicles abandoned the parade for safer ground.
The Times-Picayune reported, "The disapproving response reflects a backlash that has erupted nationally over the popular electric vehicle brand, in response to Tesla owner Elon Musk’s close alliance with President Donald Trump. Musk, the world’s richest man, heads up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has wielded a heavy hatchet to federal jobs and foreign aid since Trump returned to the White House six week ago. Musk has been vocal in attacking liberal policies and diversity programs."
Many of those job losses are coming in New Orleans and all around Louisiana.
“It’s just been brutal. They’re killing us out here,” one rider told a police officer in a video The Times-Picayune reported on.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
...the Post Star lost a lot, when it lost [in alphabetical order] Will Doolittle and Ken Tingley / -we are fortunate, indeed, to still have their incisive writing here: in Ken's "The Front Page" and in Will's "Afterthoughts"...
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” - George Orwell