LOVATO AT LARGE: The Lagging Leader gets sued...again
Predictably, the Lake County Leader is facing another lawsuit due to its inability to maintain a stable newsroom and a complete and utter inability to effectively direct professional journalists. (Click the graphic below to see the full PDF.)
The year I was hired, 2014, the paper went through at least four editors and six reporters. This year, that figure is up to at least seven warm bodies. I say at least because it really is hard to keep track, some only lasted a few days or weeks, and others were offered jobs, did some research about Hagadone and The Leader, then turned down the offers.
I sued the Leader and Idaho-based parent Hagadone for Constructive Termination and settled out of court in July after discovery items showed a clear, organized and systemic attempt to berate my work based on false or even invented facts and force me to quit despite the fact that I earned two performance bonuses every month as editor and that my circulation numbers were actually increasing while every other paper in the chain was steadily dropping. The files are in the documents we filed with the suit.
Former reporter and my wife, Michelle, currently has civil suits filed in district court which are all a matter of public record. We happen to know three former Leader journalists who are also considering lawsuits and should.
(Why surrounding periodicals, and there are lots of them, don't report on this stuff is puzzling and frustrating but that is for another column.)
In this slander suit, Nathaniel James Rogers, 22, of Ronan, is asking for at least $12,000 in damages for libel and slander. There was a hearing in Lake County District Court today, Dec 21.
The suit, filed by Polson attorney Britt Cotter, claims a Leader reporter and “unknown editors” damaged his client's personal reputation when the Leader incorrectly reported that he pleaded guilty to having an affair with a 14-year-old girl, rape, child molestation when he actually pleaded no contest, which is not an admission of guilt.
Further, Cotter sent a certified letter to the Leader, received by General Manager Lauri Low Ramos, asking the once-dominant Lake County paper to simply print and post a correction. But the Leader published the correction too late and allegedly did not meet the conditions Cotter required, according to court files.
Leader Reporter Brett Berntsen, one of at least seven journalists who shuffled through the newsroom's revolving door in 2016, wrote the story and should be considered a victim of the Leader's torturous newsroom and complete lack of qualified oversight. The rate of turnover of Hagadone's weekly newspapers and flagship Kalispell Daily Inter Lake is so high that the chain keeps ads for replacements constantly posted in trade periodicals and still can't keep up with the loss of labor.
According to Hagadone's own numbers, the Leader's circulation dropped from more than 8,000 weekly about 11 years ago to about 2,000 weekly by the end of 2013. That drop corresponds with the founding of the Valley Journal, which dominates local news media in the Mission Valley.
BTW – The attorney who filed my suit against The Leader lost two partners and can't take my case of false arrest against the Montana Highway Patrol and Trooper Anthony Isbell so we are looking for an attorney who can file the case before the Oct. 1, 2017 deadline. As a reminder, the charges were all dismissed, I am suffering from long-term nerve damage and I will probably never work for another newspaper the rest of my life despite my incredible career. So we are looking for an attorney to take the MHP case.
Finally, every time I do something that Inter Lake/Leader Publisher Rick Weaver doesn't like, he pays his Missoula attorneys – Garlington, Lohn and Robinson, to send me a threatening letter, so let me save Weaver the trouble. Tell your bullies to send the next letter directly to my Attorney. You guys have the address.
