Stock of the Journal Sentinel’s owner, the Milwaukee-based Journal Communications, is trading two points higher than McClatchy’s. “We’re definitely not immune from the economic realities that face journalism,” says Greg Borowski, the Journal Sentinel’s investigations editor. “But the top editors here have always maintained that it’s important to do public-service journalism. They’ve made it a top priority, and we see major results from our big investigative projects. Will the average Packers story have more hits online than the average courts story? Yes. But we don’t measure our impact strictly by how many hits we get. We look at the impact on the public and the community as well.” Star editors and management — a group, it’s worth noting, whose positions haven’t been cut nearly as sharply as those in other areas of the paper — would likely point to last year’s “Nightmare in Maryville” story
in the documents was an exchange between Coleman and a Nodaway County prosecutor in which she admitted that, on the night of the alleged rape, she indicated to Matthew Barnett, the accused rapist, that she might provide him sexual favors if he bought her alcohol. The Star’s report on the deposition omitted this bit of information; such nuance apparently did not fit into its established narrative of Coleman as a one-dimensional victim. “In unusual tactic, Miranda rights were read to Daisy Coleman in Maryville case” went the headline.
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arlier this month, McClatchy sold the Anchorage Daily News, the 13th-largest newspaper in its portfolio, to the Alaska Dispatch, a billionaireowned, online-only publication founded in 2008. McClatchy said in a press release that it hadn’t planned to sell the Anchorage
“I don’t think there’s any chance we’ll see any newsroom growth at McClatchy papers until at least 2018. And by then, who knows how small they’ll be?” as evidence of the paper’s investigative bona fides. The story, by reporter Dugan Arnett, detailed the alleged sexual assault of a young woman named Daisy Coleman, and her family’s mistreatment by Maryville law enforcement and townspeople. It was an explosive story told well, and it became a viral sensation after Gawker picked it up and hacktivist site Anonymous took up Coleman’s cause. Fannin, who won several awards as the editor of the Star’s sports page before being promoted to the paper’s top editor position, is said to have entered the newsroom the day after Arnett’s article ran and declared “Nightmare in Maryville” “the story of the century.” (Fannin strongly denies this. “I’m very proud of the job that we did on that story,” he says. “But I can assure you no one at the Star said that or thinks that.”) The staff at KCUR 89.3 might have been interested to hear his alleged boast. The station had reported on the Coleman case five months before the Star, in a 1,900word piece called “Why Was the Maryville Rape Case Dropped?” Arnett and his editors made their version of the story sing, no question. But the packaging and follow-up also reeked of prize-sniffing. In March, after a special prosecutor re-examined the case and found insufficient evidence for a rape charge, new depositions related to the case surfaced. Among the revelations
Daily News until Alice Rogoff made an offer. But presumably the company is happy to have the extra $34 million. The Alaska Dispatch was originally the effort of two Alaska journalists who were concerned that local and state issues weren’t getting adequate attention from Alaska media outlets such as the Anchorage Daily News, the state’s largest daily. They eventually landed on the radar of Rogoff, a former CFO at U.S. News and World Report and the wife of David Rubenstein, the billionaire founder of the Carlyle Group. Rogoff bought in, and with her financing, the Dispatch was able to hire talent away from other media outlets and build an operation that, at the time of the acquisition of the Anchorage Daily News, boasted 30 employees devoted to covering serious issues in Alaska. Rogoff is only the most recent wealthy individual to purchase a struggling newspaper. Jeff Bezos famously bought The Washington Post last year. Warren Buffett now owns several daily papers, including his hometown Omaha World-Herald. Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor recently purchased the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Could something like what happened in Alaska happen here? There are certainly plenty of people with deep enough pockets continued on page 13
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