Four journalists on the Kenai Peninsula just quit their jobs in a huff. They complained that their publisher edited an article one of them had written at the request of Alaska Rep. Sarah Vance from Homer. They allege this amounts to government interference in the free press. The entire affair illustrated that these individuals never understood how the newspaper industry works, and as far as the departure of regional editor Erin Thompson goes, I am losing no tears over her leaving.

The entire issue started with a memorial held on a beach in Homer for Charlie Kirk on September 17. Rep. Vance organized the memorial. I attended and reported on it here. A reporter for the Homer News, by the name of Chloe Pleznac, also wrote an article about the event, and she used some inflammatory language when describing the deceased Mr. Kirk. When this language was brought to the attention of the newspaper’s publisher, the story was quickly revised without Ms. Pleznac’s input. When Pleznac and three other individuals found out about the correction, they all quit.

The departure of these four individuals might actually be a good sign for print journalism in Alaska.

Then they decided to write a letter to the Anchorage Daily News to explain their unhappiness with their bosses’ actions. In the letter, they attacked their former employer and Rep. Vance, who brought this issue up. They defended the original article as written, implying that they quit their jobs because they were defending journalistic integrity. In another article on the issue, they explained that the objectionable comments in the original story were sourced from the New York Times. If they were fair and impartial journalists, they would have recognized that the left-wing NY Times is not a reliable source for material about a conservative like Mr. Kirk. However, that is the action they took, and they defended it.

The journalists who quit were employed by a small regional publisher called Sound Publishing, but Sound is owned by a much larger entity, the Carpenter Media Group. It was Carpenter who disagreed with the article and made the correction. By quitting after this action, the journalists illustrated that they never understood how their business works in the first place.

Newspapers earn money from advertising revenue. When stories are published in a newspaper, which alienates half the potential advertisers in a community, that revenue may precipitously drop. There is no inherent right for journalists to be employed if they take actions that hurt the business they work for. It doesn’t take a media genius to see that publishing the original article was not a wise business decision. That is why the publisher, Carpenter Media, reacted the way it did.

The proper action for the journalists should have been to show remorse. Everyone makes mistakes, but the right action when this happens is to offer a sincere apology for the error and promise never to do it again. Nowhere in any of the stories about their departure have any of the quitters apologized or shown remorse. They have shown nothing but indignation when they are called out for doing so, and they deserve to be unemployed.

The departure of these four individuals might actually be a good sign for print journalism in Alaska. Perhaps the editorial policy of Sound Publishing newspapers is changing. Their papers in Alaska have had a long history of liberal editorial bias with little balance in their news coverage or on their opinion page. For that reason, many conservatives do not read their papers.

However, Sound Publishing was recently acquired by the Carpenter Media Group in 2024. Carpenter is a large publisher of 250 newspapers in the US and Canada. It prides itself on fact-based reporting that benefits both readers and local businesses. Carpenter’s decision to get involved in this local kerfuffle, along with the resignation of these four journalists, might be a sign that their papers in Alaska may soon deliver more balanced reporting. If they do so, I might even have to start reading the Homer News again and stop calling it a yellow rag. I have been doing so ever since being blackballed at the hands of the regional editor, Erin Thompson, a couple of years ago. Thompson was one of the four journalists to quit, and to be honest, I am enjoying a tremendous amount of schadenfreude at her departure. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Erin.

The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.

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