The Neosho Daily News ran the story today about Liberty Group Publishing's sale to Fortress Investments.
Though the Daily ran pretty much the same story, word for word, (except for substituting the names of the Daily, the Neosho Post, and The Carthage Press) as every other Liberty newspaper did, for some reason Daily editors felt obliged to run the byline "From Staff Reports."
Again, I will harp on something that has always bothered me. If the staff didn't do anything except substitute a few words to a news release then it is not staff reports. The staff had little or nothing to do with it.
Why can't newspapers simply say it is a news release and who it is from?
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Interestingly enough, The Carthage Press ran the same story today with the byline "From Staff Reports." Now which staff actually wrote this story, because it sure as heck wasn't either The Carthage Press or the Neosho Daily News. People need to know the source of information whenever that is possible.
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Liberty Group Publishing sold to Fortress Investments of New York for $530 million, according to newspaper industry sources. Liberty owns The Carthage Press, the Neosho Daily News, The Big Nickel, The Neosho Post, and more than 300 other U. S. publications.
The company was put up for auction last August, but the auction was called off earlier this year and the heavily-leveraged company was able to borrow $335 million to refinance its debts, as revealed first in The Turner Report.
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All three local television stations had solid reports Wednesday on the first appearance of perennial candidate Martin Lindstedt of Granby on statutory sodomy charges.
I did notice that on KODE, reporter Alan Cavanna quoted the Newton County prosecutor as saying that Lindstedt has a suit pending against Governor Matt Blunt. That lawsuit, as noted on this blog, was dismissed Tuesday.