US – Corporate owners of major newspaper chain censor editorial content about their financial cuts, send newsrooms into disarray

Editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett of the Colorado-based newspaper Denver Post resigned on May 3 after leadership at the paper’s parent company, Digital First Media (DFM), refused to let him publish an editorial package accusing Alden Global Capital (AGC) of slashing funding and firing staff for its own profit. Plunkett’s departure also followed the April 25 firing of Dave Krieger, the editorial page editor for the DFM-owned Daily Camera, who self-published a piece critical of DFM and AGC after he was prevented from running it in the Camera.

The financial cutbacks inflicted on DFM-owned newspapers across the nation resulted in $160 million in profits for the newspaper conglomerate in fiscal 2017, including $28 million from The Denver Post. DFM, the country’s second-largest newspaper chain, has allegedly eliminated two out of every three staff positions at its newspapers since gaining ownership in 2011. Thirty staffers were laid off from The Denver Post in March alone. In an op-ed published in Rolling Stone, Plunkett also alleged that DFM’s impressive 17% operating margin was purely the result of financial cutbacks on DFM-owned newspapers nationwide.

After his editorial package was denied, Plunkett claims he was told by DFM that he would be required to turn over publication plans for all opinion content at least three days in advance of publishing in order to be screened by a committee overseen by DFM senior leadership. Plunkett alleges he was told he couldn’t mention AGC or DFM in any capacity. Managing Editor Tony Adamis of the New York-based Daily Freeman said he also received instruction from DFM to seek prior approval before publishing articles related to the corporate owners after he ran an AP article publicizing the financial cutbacks. He relayed these instructions to his colleagues in an email on April 24.

DFM and AGC-owned newspapers across the country have called for the corporate owners to either invest in their newspapers or sell them to a company that will.

“What is happening at the newspapers owned by parent company Digital First Media and its corporate owner Alden Global Capital shows a disregard for basic journalism ethics, which in turn has a negative impact on press freedom,” said RSF’s North America Director Margaux Ewen. “By interfering in the editorial decisions of their newspapers based on a desire to censor reporting revealing their financial practices’ impacts on their publications, DFM and AGC are effectively preventing their reporters from performing their duties as watchdogs, as well as restricting the free flow of information within the local communities these papers serve.”

After Plunkett’s departure, 55 of the 70 staffers of The Denver Post published a letter on May 7 in the Denver Newspaper Guild condemning the censorship inflicted on their editorial page editor. Several of The Denver Post’s senior staff, including editors Dana Coffield and Larry Ryckman, chairman and editorial board member Dean Singleton—who owned the paper from 1987 to 2013— and digital director Becky Risch all resigned in the days following Plunkett’s departure.

These events come months after Newsweek Media Group’s recent attempt to censor its editorial staff at its publication Newsweek. The company faced heavy criticism after firing several reporters who had uncovered high-level financial corruption and wrongdoing involving the company’s co-founders, resulting in multiple staff resigning in protest. In the wake of this incident, it is concerning that another corporate owner would follow in Newsweek Media Group’s footsteps by attempting to infringe on its newspapers’ editorial independence.

The United States ranks 45th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2018 World Press Freedom Index after falling 2 places in the last year.