Remember the game of connect the dots? We will get to that in a moment.
It all started with a thot I had Friday night while listening to announcements from the Levitt stage.
Is Matt Paulson trying to build a local media empire to influence city hall policy even more?
It all started over a year ago when a local (seasoned) journalist told me that there are plans in the works to combine all the small local independent or semi-independent media outlets and freelancers into one organization, or at least under an umbrella of cooperation. I don’t need to list these orgs, if you read this blog, you read their sites also. This plan was later confirmed to me from another associate, but told me the plan still has some kinks in it and setbacks. I didn’t blog about this because frankly when I first heard it, I was rooting for them and said it was a great idea, let’s just see if it will work.
While many of these indies have talent, they don’t have a lot of capital, they need outside investors to make this work and they need to sell a butt load of advertising to pay everyone’s salaries.
Then walks in Matt Paulson.
But let’s play that game of ‘connect the dots’ I spoke about earlier;
• Matt Paulson has funded every campaign of all of the current 8 councilors and the mayor and many past councilors.
• Jodi Schwan leaves the Argus to start her own business website.
• Patrick Lalley, Reposa, Ellis and Sneve leave the Argus to start their own independent sites, with a small kink, Market Dweebs owner, Matt Paulson has quietly been investing in the Dakota Scout, something the council and the SOS failed to inform the public about.
• In one of the most unethical moves by city council they approve the Dakota Scout contract for legals without releasing the investors names.
• I learned Friday night at the Levitt that Paulson has hired a local popular TV anchor to work at Market Dweeb.
I’m not sure what shoe will drop next but if I were KELOLAND, DAKOTANEWS or the Argus, (nevermind, they are already a sunken ship), I would be nervous about my advertising dollars and the whole integrity of the media locally. While I like local independent journalists, I’m not sure I care for their investors, who seem to be buying up city hall candidates and now local journalists so he can control the narrative even more.
Art censoring little . . .
As a community we should be very nervous and cautious of how this potential media merger will occur, but like everything else this Dweeb touches, it will all be done in the dark of the night, because that’s how the fourth estate does things these days.
Still waiting for my offer Matt 🙂 The Scab could really use a cartoonist that used a different medium besides crayons.