Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/david-crisp/)
In a move sure to set heads spinning in the newspaper industry, Last Best News has purchased the Billings Gazette, it was announced shortly after midnight today, Sunday, April 1. Widely seen as a plucky upstart with questionable prospects when it launched as an online-only newspaper just four and a half years ago, Last Best News now finds itself owning the largest daily newspaper in Montana. (more…) Continue Reading →
Readers, we need your help. And some of you, we think, could use a little help from us. (more…) Continue Reading →
Tomorrow is the last day to make your nominations for the 2016 Magic City Music Awards. You can click on the MCMA ad on top of this page (it rotates with a Tumbleweed ad) or just go here to make your nominations. There are 60 categories to choose from, and you can also suggest a new category you’d like to see in the future. Voting will then be conducted on the same site, Oct. 6 through Oct. Continue Reading →
When I pitched my new novel, “Edward Unspooled,” to the publishing house with which I’ve been in business for five books, I was struck by a profound difference in our focus. I’d followed passion and emotion—that fire to get up every day and dive into the manuscript, maybe the only thing that makes the enterprise bearable. Here it is, I’d said. I wrote my whole heart into this thing. My publisher talked about the numbers. Continue Reading →
Last week, I was asked to speak to the American Association of University Women about the meandering path that brought me to Last Best News. What follows is a condensed, and possibly improved, version of those remarks. To begin at the beginning, a long, long time ago, in a place far, far away, I was born. That beginning is more relevant than it may sound, because even before I really knew how to write letters properly, I was already self-publishing little family newsletters, commentaries and magazines, sometimes using little toy printing presses that my brother and I had. (more…) Continue Reading →
At the risk of alienating readers who think all reporters should be cynical toughs too jaded and jaundiced to indulge in social niceties, I’m afraid some thank-yous are in order. We threw our Last Best News party and fundraiser on Friday and I’m writing this on Saturday, exhausted and still a little stunned by how well everything went and by how damned much fun, reportedly, everyone had. (more…) Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: In light of the many questions that have come in regarding the expansion of Last Best News, we asked the renowned but obscure one-time journalist Walter Ego to interview Ed Kemmick, the founder of Last Best News. Here, in place of Kemmick’s usual Prairie Lights column, we offer an edited transcript of the interview. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last Best News will be 2 years old Monday morning. We’re happy to report that Year Two was another good one. As I wrote on our first anniversary, we had 351,293 visits to the site in Year One, or just under 1,000 a day. In the past year, as of Saturday, we more than doubled that, with 708,672 visits, just under 2,000 a day. (more…) Continue Reading →
This is issue number 952 of The Billings Outpost. It also may be the last. At this writing, a chance remains that the paper will be resurrected in some fashion. But it will be under different management, with somebody other than me running the show. In the meantime, we are suspending publication. Continue Reading →
A few months before I launched Last Best News, I talked to David Crisp about a possible partnership. I was mostly joking, but only because I had no idea whether the online newspaper I was hoping to start could support one person, let alone two. I thought the possibility was worth mentioning, though, because I knew that if I ever reached the point of being able to expand, there was no one I’d rather work with. I had known David as an editor and reporter at the Billings Gazette in the mid-1990s, and he was so good at both jobs that it was a little daunting. (more…) Continue Reading →
