Anchorage Hath No Fury Like a News Anchor Scorned

 Mayor Resigns After Sexting Scandal Surfaces. His Digital Paramour Has Not.

So, the fact that Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz resigned yesterday, after admitting to an "inappropriate, consensual messaging relationship" with a local TV anchor is salacious enough and worthy of national attention, including The New York Times. 

But there's a lot more to unpack here, and much of it comes from baggage belonging to the anchor, Maria Athens (left), who's seen nightly on the ABC and Fox Alaska affiliates, known as Your Alaska Link.

Here are a few, for lack of a better term,  highlights:

--Athens told the Anchorage Daily News the texting from Berkowitz, a married father of two, began in 2016. "When he slided into my texts, with his little witty slogans and pictures," she said. 

--Their relationship badly went off the rails. Why isn't clear. But Athens clearly had a few bones to pick, which she left in a venemous voice mail first obtained by the Alaska Landmine website and later released by the mayor's office, in which she threatened to kill him and his wife, called him a "Jewish piece of living fucking shit" and made unsubstantiated claims he had sent nude photos to an underaged girl's website. That's something the purportedly not-underage girl denied to the Anchorage Press, by the way.

--For extra emphasis, Athens added in the voice mail, "I can believe I'm such a fucking good person who thought I loved you." Yeah, about that...

--Athens also went wild on social media, posting nude photos she said were of Berkowitz and filming a video inside her TV station, which she posted on her Facebook page claiming she'd have a story that would essentially accuse Berkowitz of being a pedophile. Station management demanded she remove "any mention or affiliation with our stations." But that's as far as they went, incredibly enough And then....

--Athens was arrested last Friday for getting into a fight with station general manager Scott Centers, who also doubled as a boyfriend, or, as Athens claimed in court, her fiance. As the Anchorage Daily News reported:

A charging document in the case says Athens and ... Centers fought in the car "about work," with Athens punching Centers and hitting him with her cell phone. Athens said she grabbed Centers' arm because he was driving erratically during the argument but denies attacking Centers.

Later, Athens allegedly hit Centers again inside the TV station. When police ... arrested her, she hit a cop on his vest and tried to kick the doors of the police cruiser, causing police to put her in full restraints, the charging document said.

Athens denied hitting the officer or being in full restraints. Because that would change the whole narrative, right?

A reasonable assumption would be that Athens would have been canned from the station faster than a Kodiak bear would have swallowed a salmon for lunch. But the ADN reports her status isn't clear and nobody at the station is talking. Which is something that is very welcome right about now.

When Newspapers Read Like Novellas

 Fun With Purple Prose or How Not to Catch a Train

Caught this masterful missive on one of my local Facebook groups. It's a 90-year-old dispatch from the Mount Pleasant Courier, a now-defunct title for a northern New York City suburb. The dispatch, about a car that made a wrong turn onto railroad tracks, is a compelling yarn by itself. But what makes it fun is how it's written--breathless, totally unironic but likely in keeping with the norms of small-town newspapering in the 1930s.

To wit:

"He had proceeded about an eighth of a mile when the dawn came up like thunder behind him and he sailed out of his car and spun like a maple leaf into the bushes many yards away, shocked but otherwise unhurt. As men in railroad overalls gathered about the bushes to determine if he were killed, it dawned on young Mr. Koerner that had been driving down the right-of-way of the New York Central and had been rammed by the morning's first passenger train on the Putnam division, bound for New York."

Love it! Of course, try writing like that today and your editor will let out a hearty laugh while ensuring the door hit you on the way out. But different times. And, fortunately, you can't get into the same mess as young Mr. Koerner anymore. The Putnam division went kaput in 1958, and the right-of-way (you can still spot a few remnants of tracks) is now a popular bike trail in Westchester County.

When A One-Person Newsroom Goes Down to Zero

 Lee Newspapers Fires Editor for Stating the Obvious

When even Warren Buffett doesn't have the patience to see whether an investment will pan out, you know there's trouble. And trouble is what has predictably emerged since Buffett sold his newspaper holdings to Lee Enterprises in March for $140 million. 

Like every newspaper chain, Lee has engaged in an unhealthy amount of layoffs, furloughs and other rapacious cost-cutting. Some of that can be attributed to the pandemic, but mostly to blame is the slide in circulation and advertising due to reader attrition, advertisers drifting online and not investing in a digital product worth paying for.

This crisis was ably encapsulated by Ashley Spinks (photo from WTVF), the managing editor of the weekly Floyd Press in Virginia, in an excellent piece from Mallory Noe-Payne at NPR affiliate WVTF. The title of managing editor is misleading, given that Spinks was the sole editorial employee at the paper. "You don't always have the capacity to do follow-up interviews, to add context and color to stories," Spinks told the station. "But even more important than that, what are you not reporting on?"

A good question, and one Spinks will not have an opportunity to answer, at least as managing editor of the Floyd Press. After this story aired, she was fired by Lee for doing the interview.

An update: I got fired today for doing this interview. Less than 24 hours before the Press goes to print. The paper is not finished, don’t know how it will be. On a personal level: it’s 3 days before my wedding, which my superiors knew. They couldn’t even wait for next week. 1/x https://t.co/CdPeDfbKpN

— Ashley Spinks (@AshleyinFloyd) October 13, 2020

Of course, the thin-skinned suits at Lee are cretins for doing this. But the fact that newsrooms have been reduced to almost nothing is, sadly, not news. Check out this dispatch from Mountain Home magazine about Jeff Murray, the last man sitting in the Elmira Star-Gazette newsroom, and a wondrous story in The New York Times about Evan Brandt, the only reporter covering Pottstown, PA, for the once-mighty Pottstown Mercury.

Ashley Spinks's next chapter is still evolving. But it's already a little greener.

Hello, everyone! Probably my last update for the night. I’m floored and humbled by all the support—for me, but also, I know, for the venture of small town journalism in general. I’ve gained 900 followers and now have more in my Venmo than I make in *three months* from Lee. 1/x

— Ashley Spinks (@AshleyinFloyd) October 14, 2020

You would hope another newspaper in Virginia would admire the spunk and tenacity of a journalist like Spinks and try to grab her. Sadly, though, most other newspapers in the commonwealth are also trying to stay one step ahead of oblivion. It also doesn't help that the largest papers in Virginia also happen to be owned by Lee Enterprises.