The Niagara Falls Reporter is in the news again. The attention has dramatically increased the free weekly’s readership. It has also put a spotlight on publisher and editor in chief Frank Parlato’s unorthodox—perhaps even unethical—approach to journalism.
The 22,500-circulation paper (Niagara Falls, New York’s population is around 50,000) first attracted media attention in July, when Deadspin alerted readers to a column by Lenny Palumbo that contained anti-gay statements.
Now Parlato, a real-estate developer who purchased the paper from its founder in April, has come under fire after an email he wrote to the Reporter’s (now ex-)movie reviewer, Michael Calleri, was published in Roger Ebert’s “Our Far Flung Correspondents” blog on the Chicago Sun Times’s website.
Parlato wrote to Calleri that he didn’t “want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta. where [sic, etc.] women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females. i believe in manliness … In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.”
A statement like that is going to get people’s attention. That attention worked out well for Calleri: international exposure, a spot on CBS This Morning, plenty of plugs for his new movie-review column and radio show.
Parlato tells CJR that it’s done good things for his paper, too: He’s picked up new advertisers, new readers, and, “I’ll be darned if we’re not now getting all kinds of Internet readers. I never even paid any attention to Internet—we put it up just as a courtesy.” The hate mail has died down as well, Parlato says; it’s now “four or five to one” in support of his anti-Hollywood, anti-“degenerate power woman” stance.
“I don’t pretend to be an experienced journalist in all the traditional ways,” Parlato says.
This much is clear. He recently paid prostitutes and a drug dealer for interviews, transactions he detailed in two cover stories. Both articles lack context or details about any drug or crime problems in the area that might prompt such coverage. In the articles, we follow Parlato from the streets of Niagara into an apartment where a prostitute and her friends smoke crack and watch porn. We learn about a drug dealer’s “business model” (he buys the crack he later sells “already cooked” and makes enough per week to “take care of [his] weed habit,” pay rent, and keep a cellphone).
But Parlato’s unusual approach to journalism goes beyond payouts. The Niagara Falls Reporter frequently pads its pages with photos and content from other sites and publications, apparently without permission. Columns by Michelle Malkin and Charlie Daniels from Creators Syndicate and CNS News appear in the Reporter with no attribution to their original source. Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn’s annual report on wasteful government spending is frequently mined for content; sometimes Coburn’s name is spelled correctly, sometimes it isn’t. The original source of the material is never stated. Parlato says he “contributes” to CNS but doesn’t have an “official relationship” with the syndicate. CNS did not return calls; Creators would not tell CJR whether or not it had an agreement with Parlato or the Reporter.
In another article, five of the nine paragraphs were entirely lifted from a press release posted on Food and Water Watch four days earlier. Morgan Dunbar was originally given the byline for the Reporter’s article; her name was removed after Parlato was informed that the majority of the article’s content was not original. The article was not removed from the site.
And the Reporter frequently uses photos without permission or credit. In one recent story, Parlato visited a store whose owner advertises in the paper. Its manager, he writes, looks like Clark Kent, “a mild-mannered reporter alleged to have a hidden life as a super hero whose true identity was unknown, but occasionally suspected.” The resemblance to late actor Christopher Reeve was highlighted by paired photos. The photo of Reeve, from a movie still, is not credited to Warner Bros.
I find this article incomplete. Under the previous owner/editor, the Niagara Falls Reporter was a popular gadfly that was even named the "official newspaper of the city of Niagara Falls." It was also popular in Buffalo. Parlato fudges facts about the internet. The paper had a big internet presence that Parlato inherited. All those Niagara residents who moved away for jobs, you know.
Why isn't Michael Calleri interviewed? It's his story that rocketed around the world. The author makes it sound as if he should be happy with she seems to crassly consider fame. She's treating him the same way Parlato did. How many writers did Parlato remove? I gather all of them. What about the readers who cared about the old Reporter and its style and writing? It even had Pulitzer Prize-winners contributing free-lance, friends of the former editor.
Ms. Morrison lets Parlato off the hook regarding his journalistic practices. She doesn't probe deep enough and seems to be saying: behave yourself and you might have a good newspaper. Has she actually read the Parlato-era Reporter, a sloppy compendium of grammar and spelling errors, not to mention loopy writing and weird thematic leaps. I expected more and better from the CJR.
#1 Posted by Dan Cooper, CJR on Wed 5 Dec 2012 at 08:23 PM
Sara Morrison should have researched this story a little better. Frank Parlato is not the kind of person we want buying weekly newspapers. Isn't the sad recent history of weekies in the United States lesson enough? Consider the demise of the poor Village Voice and others across the country. Morrison tries to hang Parlato with charges of lifting material, but her last couple of paragraphs erroneously offers salvation to Parlato. The real story is that a journalist, a movie critic, faced with draconian rules for covering his beat, took a courageous stand that Morrison sniffs at. I am very disappointed at how she blithely glosses over this factor. That's the real story. Where's the praise for a journalist with a backbone? Here's an article about the Niagara Falls Reporter from Buffalo's alternative weekly, Artvoice, that was published after Michael Calleri's column appeared on Ebert's website. Calleri's column is one of the truest and most honest stories we've seen about the current state of journalism in a long time. He should have been the focus of Morrison's take on the situation. Calleri's story is eye-opening. The Artvoice piece is hair-raising. http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/2012/11/19/niagara-falls-reporter-and-gynophobia/
#2 Posted by Charlotte Wiedeman, CJR on Wed 5 Dec 2012 at 11:39 PM
Agreed. Sara Morrison misses the story. By a mile. The story isn't about the publisher. It's about the movie reviewer. When was the last time we saw the kind of journalistic integrity that was displayed by the critic? And then he had the guts to go public with his story, putting him right in the middle of contemporary issues about the treatment of women and the future of brave personal journalism. Why does Ms. Morrison think we care at all about the haphazard, fly-by-night publisher? We need more writers like Michael Calleri, not more publishers as depicted. Did Ms. Morrison see Parlato as an easy target? Sort of tabloidy on the part of the CJR if you ask me.
Women's issues and movie-making are interesting and well worth covering, but this is, above all, a story about the state of contemporary journalism. And the focus of Ms. Morrison's article needed to be on the individual journalist who is the reason we care about the story and all of the issues involved. Her dismissal of the critic's role is unfair, unkind, unjust, and questionable from a journalistic standpoint.
#3 Posted by William Brodner, CJR on Thu 6 Dec 2012 at 12:59 AM
Good points, all, but that individual journalist was (as Sara notes in her piece) well-covered elsewhere. If he had been the sole focus, the story wouldn't offer any new information.
#4 Posted by Kira Goldenberg, CJR on Thu 6 Dec 2012 at 07:58 AM
Perhaps Kira, but Morrison sloughs off the critic's accomplishments. He wouldn't have to be the sole focus of the story. That makes no sense. Right now, he isn't even a minor part of the story. I'd argue that the strange, amateur publisher is the sole focus of the article here, and wrongly so. Morrison is definitely emphasizing the wrong side of the controversy. Without writers, critics, and reporters, publishers would have nothing in their newspapers. Where's the critic's voice? Where's Roger Ebert's? Why did Ebert choose to run it? And the ending of Morrison's article is sort of an escape hatch for the publisher. I am disappointed in this. If this is the CJR's take on the entire situation, it's not a good one.
#5 Posted by Marvin Holter, CJR on Thu 6 Dec 2012 at 08:45 AM
Although it seems to question the publisher's practices, this article ends up being much too pro-publisher with that weird out for him at the close of the column. Why was it decided to focus on the publisher? He is not a good person, nor is he a professional. I agree, where are Roger Ebert and Michael Calleri? Here are two true journalists, and they barely get mentioned. Where's the discussion of the women's aspect and/or the movie aspect? The CJR needs to do better on this entire story. There are a lot of journalism issues that are being ignored. Publisher's demands versus writer's freedoms. The takeover of a newspaper by someone with no experience. Censorship. What about the readers and their comfort level with the newspaper under the original owner/editor? Would movie studios want to advertise in this newspaper now? Common sense versus business sense. I find this CJR column a bit lazy. More research was needed. This is an international story that shines a light on contemporary journalism. The CJR should have gone bigger and bolder.
#6 Posted by Jean Spillman, CJR on Thu 6 Dec 2012 at 09:12 AM
Hunh? The critic has been covered "elsewhere." What? That excuses this weak reaction to what Morrison calls an "international" story. Do you know something, I don't read "elsewhere," I read the Columbia Journalism Review. It should have done a better job reporting on this entire episode. There are so many journalism issues at play here that it's staggering.
#7 Posted by Thom Mishra, CJR on Thu 6 Dec 2012 at 09:25 AM