CNN’s Jamie Gangel reported that while McHenry gave the public order that Pelosi was being kicked out of her hideaway office, McCarthy was actually responsible for Pelosi and Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer being booted. Appearing on “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” Gangel called it “real estate revenge.”
Gangel added, “And guess who is moving into Pelosi’s office? You get one guess.”
Of course: Kevin McCarthy.
Gangel said, “One Republican source said to me, quote, ‘Kevin is on a revenge tour. Patrick would never do that on his own. This was Kevin’s call.’”
Tapper said, “Classy.”
Ogden Newspapers faces lawsuit from former EIC
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.
A former Aspen Times editor-in-chief is suing the newspaper and its parent company, Ogden Newspapers, alleging that they had violated his rights and “the integrity of local journalism” when they fired him one day into his tenure.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Pitkin County District Court in Colorado, comes nearly a year and a half after The Aspen Times faced heavy criticism for suspending coverage of a controversial land purchase by Soviet-born billionaire Vladislav Doronin. Andrew Travers, the plaintiff in the suit, has said that multiple Ogden leaders reassured him that they would lift coverage restrictions if he accepted a promotion to editor-in-chief. However, he was fired after he published a column criticizing Ogden’s handling of the situation.
Travers argues in his lawsuit that The Aspen Times; the paper’s owner Swift Communications; and Ogden Newspapers, which acquired Swift in 2021, broke laws prohibiting employers from making misrepresentations of job security to influence candidates. He is seeking a jury trial, reinstatement of employment, and various economic and compensatory damages.
“Ogden Newspapers and its leaders should be held accountable for destroying the Aspen Times, muzzling coverage and violating the public trust,” Travers said in a press release. “Along with abandoning their journalistic responsibility, Ogden clearly violated my legal rights. Affirming those rights in court will deter Ogden and others from doing this to other journalists and other communities.”
Ogden regional publisher and chief revenue officer Cameron Nutting Williams wrote in an email that the company has not yet received any official notification of the lawsuit but denies any unlawful conduct and “strongly disagree(s)” with Travers’ characterization of the situation.
In April 2022, Doronin sued the Times and Ogden for defamation over its coverage of his land purchase in the resort town of Aspen. As the two parties worked to settle the lawsuit, the Times halted coverage of Doronin, even deciding against covering the lawsuit itself — a practice atypical for many newspapers. The Times’ editor-in-chief was forced to spike a news story and two columns about Doronin, and he eventually resigned. Several other staff members also quit.
Leaders at the Times and Ogden urged Travers, then the paper’s arts editor, to accept a promotion to editor-in-chief. Over the course of several meetings with top leaders, Travers stressed that he would only accept the promotion if he had editorial freedom. Leaders assured him that they would lift coverage restrictions.
One of the first pieces Travers published as editor-in-chief included the two spiked columns, as well as internal emails about the columns. He said that he received approval from Times publisher Allison Pattillo before publication. However, after the piece went up, he was fired and the Times temporarily took down the web version before republishing a version without the emails.
Ogden has previously said that Travers was fired for including the internal emails. Pattillo told Aspen Public Radio at the time that she "was not aware of the extent of emails that were going to be published" and took responsibility for not asking to read the entire column.
In the aftermath, several more staff members quit, and Pitkin County stripped the Times of its status as the paper of record, instead giving the designation to rival paper Aspen Daily News, which continues to hold it to this day.
Kill that headline
In the past, if you went to X, formerly known as Twitter, and posted a story from, say, The New York Times or The Washington Post or your local news outlet, the tweet would then show a headline, a photo and a description of the story.
But starting Wednesday, as X owner Elon Musk promised over the summer, X will not display the headlines.
The Wrap’s Natalie Korach reports, “If the account posting the link wants a headline or synopsis, they will have to do it manually. It appears that the change has only impacted mobile users and has not yet made its way to X for desktop.”
You would assume, however, that is coming.
Korach wrote, “Musk announced that this change was coming in August in an attempt to reduce clickbait-style posts and shrink the size of posts in a user’s feed, as well as to improve the site’s aesthetics.”
But The Verge’s Jay Peters wrote, “In my opinion, removing headlines makes X harder to use — posts are less easy to parse at a glance — so I’m not sure if this change is going to lead to people posting more often like Musk hopes.”
SNL’s return
