Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/missoula-independent/)
Efforts by staffers at the Missoula Independent to organize under Lee Enterprises gained the support of the state’s largest labor union on Tuesday, with the MEA-MFT saying it is watching the process closely. (more…) Continue Reading →
Staffers at the Missoula Independent took the first step this week in forming a union to preserve the paper’s independence under the ownership of Lee Enterprises, a corporate chain that owns five other papers in Montana, including the Missoulian. (more…) Continue Reading →
The employees of the Missoula Independent have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to begin the process of forming a union, according to a press release sent Monday afternoon by the Missoula News Guild Organizing Committee. Support for the filing was unanimous across the staff’s editorial, production and sales departments, the release stated. (more…) Continue Reading →
Lee Enterprises recently implemented another round of staff cuts at its Montana newspapers, including the Billings Gazette, the largest newspaper in the state. At the Gazette, it appears that at least seven people were laid off or agreed to take buyouts in recent weeks, including up to three people in the newsroom. (more…) Continue Reading →
Unsurprisingly, three Montana daily newspapers, all owned by Lee Enterprises, have come out in support of Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate in the special election to fill Montana’s vacant (and only) seat in the U.S. House. You can read what the editorial boards of the Billings Gazette, the Missoulian and the Helena Independent-Record had to say, or you could just glance at one of them, because they all said essentially the same thing: that in these perilous times we need somebody who can get right to work, which they claim Gianforte is ready to do. (more…) Continue Reading →
Forward Montana is still waiting to hear from Greg Gianforte, but the other two candidates for the state’s sole U.S. House seat have scheduled Facebook Live town halls. As we reported earlier this month, Forward Montana has teamed up with Last Best News and the Missoula Independent to sponsor the town halls. Democratic candidate Rob Quist and Libertarian candidate Mark Wicks will be featured in hour-long town halls moderated by Alex Sakariassen of the Missoula Independent, who will be asking questions submitted by readers. Some questions have been submitted already, but we could use some more, so please go to https://goo.gl/forms/Y3CN9ZJXPVhf66zm1 and submit yours. Forward Montana, a youth-advocacy group whose slogan is “Not right, not left, but forward,” has not yet been able to schedule a town hall with Gianforte, the Republican candidate for the House seat vacated by Ryan Zinke when he became secretary of the Interior. Continue Reading →
As promised, the staff of the Missoula Independent has written extensively about the sale of the newspaper to Lee Enterprises, the national chain that owns the Missoulian and the Billings Gazette. The coverage includes news stories, a Q&A section with some damned hilarious segments, an editorial from publisher Matt Gibson and a damned hilarious column from Dan Brooks. (His column also highlights the chief danger of satire: I’m not absolutely sure he was joking about this being his last column.)
It’s all good stuff, even if a faint air of whistling in the graveyard hangs over the issue. Everyone involved wants desperately to believe that Lee will live up to its promise of hands-off ownership, wants to believe its assurances that the Indy’s tradition of hard-nosed reporting on the Missoulian is something that has to continue. There were more than a few signs of writers pushing the boundaries right out of the gate, to see what will be tolerated in the new era. Continue Reading →
When Lee Enterprises bought two Bozeman-area publications in 2004, Billings Gazette Publisher Mike Gulledge said the publications “will extend the reach of Lee’s daily newspapers and other publications in western Montana, and we’re excited to welcome them into our family.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Even if you live in Eastern Montana and have never heard of, much less read, the Missoula Independent, you ought to be worried about the fate of that alternative weekly newspaper. The Indy, which has been around for more than 25 years, has had its ups and downs, but generally speaking it was a worthy successor to the underground and alternative newspapers that came before it, and which made Missoula the only city in Montana with a real tradition of that sort of journalism. (more…) Continue Reading →
Missoula Independent Matt Gibson said on Thursday that he chose to sell his business to Lee Enterprises to tap the corporation’s technical capabilities, adding that the Indy’s new partnership with the Missoulian will remain a work in progress as the weeks unfold. On Thursday morning, the Missoulian announced that its corporate owner, Lee Enterprises, had bought the Missoula Independent for an undisclosed price. The announcement that took the community by surprise. (more…) Continue Reading →
