Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Doing Sherman Adelson's Bidding in Connecticut

But with Tiny Circulation, Might be Journalistic Version of One-Hand Clapping


The Las Vegas Review-Journal saga keeps getting curiouser and curiouser after Sheldon Adelson was finally outed as the buyer of Nevada's largest daily.
If the R-J newsroom got a little bit queasy when they realized the loud and proud GOP donor was now presiding over their paychecks, no amount of Maalox would have done the trick when editor Mike Hengel announced yesterday he was taking a buyout.
In other words, to be continued.
Now comes a bizarre twist to this story from The Hartford Courant, about why the New Britain Herald, a newspaper with circulation just north of 9,000, published a lengthy story about so-called business courts, including 10 paragraphs devoted to a dustup Adelson had in one in Las Vegas. For a paper the size of the Herald, undertaking such a story is both unusual and unwarranted, given the few reporters left in its newsroom.
Turns out, the Herald's publisher, Michael Schroeder, has a business relationship with Adelson. But that's not where the story ends. The Courant reports it was written by someone named "Edward Clarkin," a scribe no one seems to know anything about, including current and former editors at the Herald or its sister paper, the Bristol Herald.
And for a little extra icing on this cruddy cake, two people quoted in the Clarkin missive said they were never interviewed for the piece and are wondering out loud how they made their way into print.
As for Schroeder, he's not talking about the Herald's newsgathering priorities or much of anything else. Apparently, what happens in New Britain.....



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