Dakota Beacon

During the night of August 28-29, 1889, a “mob” destroyed the offices of the Valley City Times-Record.  It was speculated that local anti-prohibitionist businessmen were involved, since the stance of the Times-Record was prohibitionist.  At the time, Valley City was known as a rough-and-tumble “wide open” town.

A different, more genteel, approach to press censorship occurred in 1947 when Don C. Matchan was the owner and editor of the Times-Record.  Matchan’s somewhat left-of-center editorials went against the grain of several local businessmen. They moved to force Matchan out.  This went strongly against the will of the community according to a newspaper poll conducted by Matchan.  The Matchan Affair was reported in Time magazine.

Whatever one’s opinion of Matchan’s views, he was an exceptional person and—probably motivated by the threat of lost advertising revenues—he moved on to … well, anywhere else.  After Don Matchan, the Times-Record was partly or wholly owned by out-of-state individuals or corporations and, most recently, ended up in the hands of Horizon Publications of Marion, Illinois.

In brief: In July of 2011, one of the Times-Record employees, reporting to the T-R Publisher, Nikki Zinke, went over Ms. Zinke’s head to Melanie Radler, President of the Times-Record’s owners, Horizon Publications.  This individual, angling for Zinke’s job, reported to Radler that Zinke’s editorial policies were causing problems in Valley City that might be affecting advertising revenues.

As far as I know, no evidence of revenue losses were presented, but apparently even a whiff of such a possibility got the attention of Radler and Horizon—and they responded.

Many of the citizens of Valley City and Barnes County had welcomed the genuine hard-hitting investigative reporting that had become part of the editorial policy of the Times-Record  This was in stark contrast to the puff-and-fluff pieces that had hitherto dominated the Times-Record’s pages and had cast a shadow on their efforts to create an image of Valley City as some sort of up-and-coming Mayberry.

Horizon Publications sent an agent to interview “influential” townspeople. The result was that Zinke was fired.

On August 15th, Editor Lee Morris, sick of the intrigue and backstabbing taking place, wrote a camouflaged account of the events leading to Zinke’s firing.  His highly critical column, vaguely titled “An American pastime and politics,” was disguised by using the byline of Gene Lyons, a syndicated columnist whose opinion columns appear regularly in the Times-Record.  Lee then slipped this column into the Times-Record copy just before it was sent to the printer.
Lee’s exposé was picked up by dozens of blogs and other news outlets worldwide.  In addition to media sources throughout the eastern part of this state, national and international news outlets re-told Lee’s story.  These publications included Forbes, Stinky Journalism, The Fort Worth Weekly, Mondo Times (“media coverage involving 31,250 media outlets worldwide”), Inside Milwaukee, Media Jobs Daily, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, even LankaWeb (Sri Lanka) and The Paepae, published in Auckland, New Zealand.

Triad Watch of North Carolina commented: “An amazing story of how local newspapers manipulate the news.” And, in the words of Gillian Shaw of Google+:

A stunning commentary on the state of journalism or lack thereof at the North Dakota Valley City Times-Record.  Even more stunning is the fact that departing Lee Morris managed to get [his opinion of it] printed in that paper as his final contribution.

Online articles and comments were 100% in support of Nikki Zinke.  It is also clear from these comments and articles that policies of censorship-for-profit are quite common in small-town newspapers.

It should be also clear by now that the efforts of certain Valley Citians, in consort with outside controllers, have given Valley City a widespread reputation for scandal far beyond what might have been caused by letting the Times-Record operate by its own lights under Nikki Zinke.

What we currently have is control of Valley City Times-Record news and editorial content that involves collusion between an outside agency and local malcontents.

What is the character of Horizon Publications, the owners of the Valley City Times-Record—the people who dictate the nature of its content?

Melanie Radler at Horizon Publications—who had set in motion Nikki Zinke’s firing on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations from Nikki’s in-house enemy—took over as president of Horizon when her father, David Radler, the founder of the business, was sentenced to prison. David Radler was convicted of fraud, along with his partner in crime, Conrad Black, both of whom illegally pocket millions.

Nikki Zinke has since gone on to publish North Dakota’s newest newspaper—The Independent of Barnes County (launched October 28, 2011)—dedicated to area issues, events, and culture.  Her efforts will cause the Horizon-controlled Times-Record some problems.