After being continually trashed by the Argus Leader, Governor Rounds has rightly terminated all contact with the Argus, according to one of the Gannett overlords:
When the election was over, Arnold Garson, publisher in Sioux Falls and vice president for the Gannett Pacific Group, sent an e-mail to me showing both the cost and the payoff of this investigative project. The e-mail said:
"On the one hand, our tough reporting on the governor's unchecked personal use of state airplanes was one of two news projects that have cost us having any kind of relationship with the governor. (The other project is our still-ongoing effort, including lawsuit, to obtain the names of persons invited to the state-funded Governor's Pheasant Hunt.) He won't meet with the editorial board for any purpose. He has attempted to shut down our reporters' access to all his state departments. And in his recent re-election campaign, he specifically outed the Argus Leader and its weeklies from the political advertising buys his campaign staff placed in every other daily and weekly newspaper in the state. I figure that cost us about $50,000. . . ."
The Argus has a history of Republican-bashing, so it's little wonder why Governor Rounds refuses to speak with them.
Recent Comments