More details emerge about the police raid against a Kansas newspaper

We’re starting to learn more about why police in Marion, Kansas, raided a newspaper office and two private homes, possibly leading to the death of the newspaper’s 98-year-old co-publisher, Joan Meyer. It’s pretty thin gruel, and it certainly doesn’t justify the police department’s violation of federal law in not seeking a subpoena before making off with the Marion County Record’s computers, cellphones and other materials.

According to Jonathan O’Connell and Jon Swaine of The Washington Post (free link), Phyllis Zorn, a reporter for the Record, may have broken privacy laws by downloading documents pertaining to a local restaurateur’s history of drunken driving and driving without a license. She obtained those records from a state database, possibly by claiming to be the restaurant owner or by lying about her reasons for seeking the documents. (Jim Salter of The Associated Press has a similar story.)

This story has been convoluted from the start, and I’m not going to try to parse all of it here. You can read the Post’s article if you’re interested in the details, but here is some pertinent information: Zorn already had a copy of the documents, given to her by an enemy of the restaurant owner, Kari Newell, and was using the state database to confirm their authenticity. The Record’s publisher, Eric Meyer, reportedly told Newell the paper would not use the records for a story because of the way Zorn had obtained them — although some of the details were published anyway because they came out at a city council meeting. Meyer and Zorn have both denied that the Record broke any laws.

The local prosecutor has ordered that the materials seized by police be returned to the Record.

State authorities are said to be investigating the newspaper’s actions but not those of the police department. That’s fine, but the U.S. Justice Department needs to undertake its own investigation.

In other developments:

• Danielle Kaye of NPR reports that the Record has compiled an admirable record over the years for its tough watchdog journalism. “Founded in 1869,” she writes, “the paper is known for its hard-hitting coverage of local government decisions and holding people in positions of power accountable.”

• In The New York Times, Kevin Draper writes (free link) that the Record’s scrappy brand of local journalism is controversial among some local residents — especially since Eric Meyer came home several years ago from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he had been a reporter and editor, to take charge of the family business. Draper asks: “What is the appropriate relationship between a community and a local news organization, and what duty, if any, does it have to be a booster for the places it covers?”

• Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who signed the search warrant used to in the raid, has her own history of drunken driving, reports Chance Swaim of The Wichita Eagle. Viar “was arrested at least twice for DUI in two different Kansas counties in 2012, a Wichita Eagle investigation found.”

• The Kansas City Star has confirmed earlier reporting by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket that Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody left his previous job at the Kansas City Police Department after being accused of sexual misconduct. The Star’s paywall appears to be impenetrable, but Kabas writes that the Star found Cody was demoted after he allegedly disparaged a female officer and made sexist comments. Rather than accept the demotion, Cody took the job in Marion. Eric Meyer says the Record was reporting on Cody’s past at the time of the raid.

Earlier:

Correction: Phyllis Zorn contacted me on Dec. 13 and informed me that Eric Meyer has not filed a lawsuit. I’ve updated my story accordingly.

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Trump and the 14th Amendment

Trumpers storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo (cc) 2021 by TapTheForwardAssist.

Heather Cox Richardson agrees with the argument that the 14th Amendment prohibits Donald Trump from seeking election because he directed and took part in an insurrection. There is, however, a problem with this argument, which neither she nor others have addressed: there first needs to be a determination that Trump did, in fact, engage in “insurrection or rebellion.”

He did. Of course he did. But he and his partisans deny it, even though it all took place in plain sight. So how would you actually get the 14th Amendment to kick in? It seems to me that a guilty verdict in either the Jan. 6 federal case or the Georgia case would do it. So would a congressional resolution (good luck with that).

So yes, if Trump is found guilty, he could be banned from running for office. Short of that, this strikes me as a pointless exercise.

Update: David French thinks the Supreme Court could intervene and declare Trump ineligible to run. Of course, that’s not going to happen, either.

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Bigfoot can’t spell

Shortly after the police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-publisher, Joan Meyer, most news outlets spelled her name “Joan.” Then The New York Times came along and, in an otherwise lovely tribute, spelled her name “Joann.” A lot of us decided we were wrong, and I went back and changed everything. Now it turns out that it was the Times that couldn’t spell her name properly. It is, in fact, “Joan,” though it’s pronounced “jo-ANN.”

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Greater Boston arts and local news get a boost from three new nonprofit projects

There’s good news about local news in Greater Boston today on three fronts. I’ll start with an attempt to revive arts reviews — at one time a staple of mainstream and alternative publications, but now relegated to niche outlets like The Arts Fuse, a high-quality website edited by Boston University professor and former Boston Phoenix arts writer Bill Marx.

Recently Paul Bass, the executive director of the nonprofit Online Journalism Project in New Haven, Connecticut, launched a grant-funded project called the Independent Review Crew (link now fixed). Freelancers in seven parts of the country are writing about music, theater and other in-person cultural events. Boston is among those seven, and freelance writer-photographer Sasha Patkin is weighing in with her take on everything from concerts to sand sculpture.

You can read Patkin’s work on the Review Crew’s website — and, this week, her reviews started running on Universal Hub as well, which gives her a much wider audience. Here’s her first contribution.

Bass is the founder of the New Haven Independent, started in 2005 as part of the first wave of nonprofit community websites. The Online Journalism Project is the nonprofit umbrella that publishes the Indy and a sister site in New Haven’s northwest suburbs; it also oversees a low-power radio station in New Haven, WNHH-LP. Before 2005, Bass was a fixture at the now-defunct New Haven Advocate, an alt-weekly that, like the Phoenix, led with local arts and was filled with reviews. The Review Crew is his bid to revive the long lost art, if you will, of arts reviewing.

Other places that are part of The Review Crew: New Haven; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Troy/Albany, New York; Oakland, California; Hartford, Connecticut; and Northwest Arkansas (the Fayetteville metro area is home to about 576,000 people).

I’ve got all kinds of disclosures I need to share here. I gave Bass some guidance before he launched The Review Crew — not that he needed any. The Indy was the main subject of my 2013 book “The Wired City,” and I’ve got a lengthy update in “What Works in Community News,” the forthcoming book that Ellen Clegg and I have written. I also suggested Universal Hub to Bass as an additional outlet for The Review Crew; I’ve known Gaffin for years, and at one time I made a little money through a blogging network he set up. Gaffin was a recent guest on the “What Works” podcast.

In other words, I would wish Paul the best of luck in any case, but this time I’ve got a bit more of a stake in it.

***

The Phoenix was not the city’s last alt-weekly. For nearly a decade after the Phoenix shut down in 2013, DigBoston continued on with a mix of news and arts coverage. Unfortunately, the Dig, which struggled mightily during COVID, finally ended its run earlier this year. But Dig editors Chris Faraone and Jason Pramas are now morphing the paper into something else — HorizonMass, a statewide online news outlet. Pramas will serve as editor-in-chief and Faraone as editor-at-large, with a host of contributors.

HorizonMass will publish as part of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, founded by Faraone and Pramas some years back to funnel long-form investigative coverage to a number of media outlets, including the Dig. HorizonMass will also have a significant student presence, Pramas writes, noting that the project’s tagline is “Independent, student-driven journalism in the public interest.” Pramas adds:

With interns working with us as reporters, designers, marketers, and (for the first time) editors, together with our ever-growing crew of professional freelance writers, we can continue to do our part to train the next generation of journalists while covering more Bay State happenings than ever before. We hope you enjoy our initial offerings and support our efforts with whatever donations you can afford.

***

Mark Pothier, a top editor at The Boston Globe, is leaving the paper to become the editor and CEO of the Plymouth Independent, a well-funded fledgling nonprofit. Pothier, a longtime Plymouth resident and former musician with the band Ministry, is already listed on the Independent’s masthead. Among the project’s advisers is Boston Globe journalist (and my former Northeastern colleague) Walter Robinson, also a Plymouth resident, who was instrumental in the launch of the New Bedford Light. Robby talked about the Plymouth Independent and other topics in a recent appearance on the “What Works” podcast.

Pothier started working at the Globe in 2001, but before that he was the executive editor of a group of papers that included the Old Colony Memorial, now part of the Gannett chain. When Gannett shifted its Eastern Massachusetts weeklies to regional coverage in the spring of 2022, the Memorial was one of just three that was allowed to continue covering local news — so it looks like Plymouth resident are about to be treated to something of a news war.

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The New York Times pays tribute to Kansas newspaper woman Joan Meyer

Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old newspaperwoman who was literally scared to death after a thuggish police raid on her home in Marion, Kansas, is the subject of a lengthy obituary in today’s New York Times (free link). Mrs. Meyer, the co-publisher of the Marion County Record, collapsed and died Saturday, the day after police descended on the paper’s office; the home she shared with her son, publisher Eric Meyer; and the home of the vice mayor. Clay Risen writes:

As at most small-town papers, job titles at The Record are nominal; everyone does everything. Editors might write articles, reporters might sweep the floors. Mrs. Meyer worked as a copy editor and the social news editor, and for decades she wrote a column about local history called Memories.

“She was a walking encyclopedia of local history,” Rowena Plett, a features reporter for The Record, said in a phone interview.

Risen adds that Mrs. Meyer “refused to let anyone, even her husband or son, touch her copy.” Truly a woman after my own heart.

The raid was supposedly related to an investigation into how the Record obtained documents about the drunken-driving history of a local caterer. But I would definitely keep an eye on Eric Meyer’s revelation that the newspaper was investigating the possibility that Police Chief Gideon Cody left his previous job in Kansas City, Missouri, after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Earlier:

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Looking back — way, way back — at the life and times of Cleopatra

“The Banquet of Cleopatra,” by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1743-’44)

What do you know about Cleopatra? I didn’t know much. When some people started complaining a few months ago that a Black actress was portraying the Egyptian queen in a Netflix film, I was surprised: I assumed she really was Black, or at least non-white.

Now I know more. Recently I listened to the audio version of Stacy Schiff’s acclaimed 2010 book “Cleopatra: A Life.” And no, Cleopatra wasn’t Black. For about 300 years, Egypt had been ruled by the Ptolemy family, who were Greeks from Macedonia. One of the qualities that made Cleopatra a more successful ruler than most of her Ptolemaic predecessors was that she actually immersed herself in Egyptian culture, which helped boost her popularity.

Schiff warns us toward the beginning that we don’t actually know that much about Cleopatra. But she brilliantly writes around those gaps, telling us about the political and social milieu of that time and offering informed speculation from various points of view. She also goes into great detail about the Roman wars that defined that time — how Julius Caesar came to power and then, after his assassination, how his nephew Octavian prevailed over Mark Antony. If you’re hazy on all this, as I was, you’ll learn a lot.

One aspect of that period that really stands out is the sheer brutality. Every few minutes (or pages), it seems, someone is being assassinated or executed, usually by beheading. The Ptolemaic dynasty was defined by brothers marrying sisters, which only seems to have worsened the homicidal palace intrigue. Schiff tells us that, far from wallowing in the tragedy of Cleopatra’s suicide, we should appreciate the fact that she was one of the few royals of her day who had the luxury of exiting the stage on her own terms.

A few tidbits I found interesting was that Cleopatra was not considered a great beauty — that reputation was invented several centuries later. She was, according to the sources Schiff consulted, conventionally attractive and highly intelligent. But to illustrate Schiff’s point, Octavian attempted to lure Mark Antony away from Cleopatra’s side by marrying him off to his sister Octavia, who apparently really was a ravishing beauty.

Also: In legend, Cleopatra committed suicide through an asp bite. But Schiff finds that she most likely used poison, a subject to which she devoted quite a bit of research, experimenting on hapless prisoners.

More broadly, Schiff reminds us that, in Cleopatra’s time, Egypt was an ancient civilization that had seen better days. Indeed, in another book I recommend, “1177 B.C.,” an exploration of the end of the Bronze Age by Eric H. Cline, Egypt is portrayed even then as decadent and decaying in comparison with its previous glories.

So there are two recommendations for your long car rides or walks. You really can’t go wrong with either.

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The Georgia indictments: Will Rudy Giuliani finally get his come-uppance?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with something new or interesting to say about the various Trump indictments. The redoubtable Heather Cox Richardson leads with the Montana climate-change court case and moves on to Tommy Tuberville before settling in for a few paragraphs about the Georgia charges. As of this writing, Josh Marshall has said nothing. Marcy Wheeler has written what may be her shortest post ever.

But it has to be said that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has done the nation a service, and not in precisely the same way as Special Counsel Jack Smith. By indicting a total of 19 people, she can get into the entire sweep of the Trump-led conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, as Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland argue in The New York Times. Because the case will be heard in state court, the trial — if there is one — will probably be on television, and a Republican president won’t be able to pardon Trump if he’s convicted. All good.

There’s already quite a bit of speculation as to who among those charged will flip. My nominee for the most likely star witness is former chief of staff Mark Meadows. One person we can be almost certain will not flip is Rudy Giuliani, if only because Willis would not likely accept his cooperation. He should be a flippee, not a flipper. If you suffered, as I did, through the second “Borat” movie, then you know Giuliani was thisclose to having sex with a woman who he believed was underage. Giuliani is a disgraceful human being, second only to Donald Trump in loathsomeness among the various defendants.

So how will this end? On Threads this morning, the historian Michael Beschloss asked: “Serious question for you: Where will Trump be two years from now? (Not your hope but your best prediction.)”

My answer: “Faking illness in a hospital bed at MAL to avoid having to appear in court.”

Not very satisfying, maybe, but a likely outcome nevertheless.

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Kansas police chief claims secret information to justify newspaper raid

On Sunday, The New York Times and The Washington Post finally picked up on the police raid targeting the office of the Marion County Record as well as the publisher’s and vice mayor’s home. The action against the Kansas newspaper — illegal on its face under federal law since officials had not obtained a subpoena — has sparked a growing outcry, and may have led to the death of the paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer.

The Post story, by Sofia Andrade and Paul Farhi, led with Meyer’s death. The Times story, by Stephen Lee Myers and Benjamin Mullin, weirdly saved that detail for the kicker. As I’ve written previously, Joan Meyer was at home Friday when police burst in and, according to her son, editor Eric Meyer, collapsed and died the following day after a sleepless, stress-filled night.

The Times quotes Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody as defending the raid, saying, “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated.” The story adds that Cody declined to provide any additional information.

This is, of course, the classic defense by small-minded people with a little bit of power: If you knew what I know, then you’d know what I know. It’s ridiculous, and of course there’s nothing to stop Cody from sharing enough information to explain why he thought it necessary to seize computers, cellphones and financial records without even bothering to seek a subpoena, as required under the federal Privacy Protection Act.

The investigation was supposedly related to documents the Record had obtained about the drunken driving arrest of a local caterer, but that seems pretty unlikely. More to the point is that, according to Eric Meyer, the paper was looking into sexual misconduct allegations involving Chief Cody at his previous position in Kansas City, Missouri, from which he retired.

In other developments:

• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has published an open letter to Chief Cody signed by 34 media and press freedom groups to “condemn” the raid, stating in part:

Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search — particularly when other investigative steps may have been available — and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcements ability to conduct newsroom searches. We urged you to immediately return the seized material to the Record, to purge any records that may already have been accessed, and to initiate a full independent and transparent review of your department’s actions.

Among the signatories: The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.

• Eric Meyer plans to file a federal lawsuit over the raid, according to Sara Fischer and Rebecca Falconer of Axios.

Earlier:

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Kansas newspaper publisher’s 98-year-old mother dies after police raid her home

Marion County Courthouse. Photo (cc) 2009 by Spacini.

Over the past 24 hours there have been some stunning new developments in the case of the Marion County Record, whose office was raided by police Friday. Also targeted were the homes of publisher Eric Meyer and a vice mayor.

• Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who was home when police burst in home on Friday, collapsed and died Saturday afternoon, possibly as a result of stress stemming from the raid. Joan Meyer was the co-owner of the Record, which reports:

She had not been able to eat after police showed up at the door of her home Friday with a search warrant in hand. Neither was she able to sleep Friday night.

She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and a router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them. Electronic cords were left in a jumbled pile on her floor.

• Initial reporting by the nonprofit Kansas Reflector suggested that the raid was somehow tied to a case involving documents provided by an anonymous source with regard to a local caterer who lacked a driver’s license and who had been convicted of drunken driving. But now it appears there may have been more — much more — behind the raid. Maria Kabas, who writes a newsletter called The Handbasket, interviewed Eric Meyer on Friday and writes:

What has remained unreported until now is that, prior to the raids, the newspaper had been actively investigating Gideon Cody, Chief of Police for the city of Marion. They’d received multiple tips alleging he’d retired from his previous job to avoid demotion and punishment over alleged sexual misconduct charges.

• The Marion County Police Department is defending its actions, according to Sherman Smith of the Kansas Reflector. Citing a post on the department’s Facebook page, Smith reports that the department acknowledges its actions were prohibited by the federal Privacy Protection Act — but that the department is claiming an exception to the law because the newspaper itself was suspected of committing a crime. Under the law, police need a subpoena, not just a search warrant, to confiscate materials from journalists. Smith’s story includes this:

“It appears like the police department is trying to criminalize protected speech in an attempt to sidestep federal law,” said Jared McClain, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm.

“The First Amendment ensures that publications like the Marion County Record can investigate public officials without fear of reprisal,” McClain said. “It chills the important function of journalism when police raid a newsroom, storm the homes of reporters, seize their property and gain access to their confidential sources. That’s precisely why we must hold accountable officers who retaliate against people who exercise their First Amendment rights.”

This shocking abridgment of the First Amendment has not yet quite broken through to the mainstream. Although CNN and USA Today have both reported on it, The New York Times and The Washington Post have not. I’d be surprised if they’re not working on stories right now. Heather Cox Richardson, in her Letters from an American newsletter, has a solid overview and relates it to the destruction of antislavery editor Elijah Lovejoy’s presses — and his ultimate assassination — in 1837.

What is unfolding in Kansas is one of the most nauseating attacks on freedom of the press that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Every officer involved, as well as the police chief and any officials who ordered the raid, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Charges in the death of Joan Meyer should be considered as well. And since the police appear to have violated federal law, Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to pay a visit as soon as he can manage to buy a plane ticket.

Earlier:

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Nobel winner weighs in on a shocking police raid against a newspaper: ‘It’s happening to you now’

Eric Meyer. Photo (cc) by Sam Bailey / Kansas Reflector

How stunningly authoritarian was a police raid on a newspaper office in Marion, Kansas? Here’s an indication: When independent media reporter Brian Stelter posted about it Friday night on the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, among those responding was Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous resistance to her own country’s authoritarian regime.

“It’s happening to you now … death by a thousand cuts,” she wrote.

The shocking raid, conducted Friday afternoon, was aimed at seizing computers, cellphones and other materials from the Marion County Record, whose owner and publisher, Eric Meyer, is a former journalist for the Milwaukee Journal and a former journalism professor at the University of Illinois. According to the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news outlet, the police action threatened Meyer’s ability to publish his paper — which, after all, may have been the point.

Meyer told the Reflector that the authorities were trying to send him a message: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

What’s especially weird about all of this is that involved a rather quotidian matter. The Reflector has been reporting on a restaurant owner who did not have a driver’s license and had been convicted of drunken driving, thus threatening her catering business. According to the Record’s own coverage of the raid, officers descended on the Record’s office as well as Meyer’s home, where they seized technology used by his 98-year-old mother to watch television and photographed Eric Meyer’s personal financial documents. The home of a vice mayor was targeted as well.

The Reflector’s journalism is licensed under Creative Commons, and news outlets are free to republish it. Below is the full story:

Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

By Sherman Smith, Sam Bailey, Rachel Mipro and Tim Carpenter | Aug. 11, 4:15 p.m.

MARION — In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving. Continue reading “Nobel winner weighs in on a shocking police raid against a newspaper: ‘It’s happening to you now’”