Rob Curley

Later on in the podcast, I'll have a quick take about turmoil at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington.

Editor Rob Curley, who's leading an effort to take the paper nonprofit, was placed on administrative leave recently for unspecified inappropriate behavior.

Now, a deeply reported article by two nonprofit news outlets has, uh, told a devastating story about what went wrong.

But now, let's hear from Jon Keller.

So people feel like they develop a relationship with the people bringing them the news, and that is something that other media can learn from, but at the same time, I'm not really sure how they're going to, uh, apply that lesson, uh, given that it seems to be unique to local television.

Anyway, now it's time for our quick takes on developments in local news.

Rob Curley was one of the early whiz kids of internet journalism.

He started out at the Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas a quarter century ago, and he moved his way up to positions at The Washington Post, the Las Vegas Sun, and The Orange County Register.

But I got to be on the backside.

I didn't influence editorial hardly at all.

But as an operations director, I was able to learn what it took to start a nonprofit, what it took to.

figure out how to apply for grants and talking to community members and seeing what they really needed in the community, not just what we assumed.

Today, and I'm here joined by one of my colleagues at Range, Daisy Zavala-Megania, and a collaborator, a new, well, once and future collaborator, Wilson Criscione of Investigate West.

So we had a big, we had a bunch of big stories last week, one of which was the two that, or the one that you two co-wrote about the events leading up to and then the suspension of Rob Curley.

So...

Where do you guys think we should begin? You know, we've kind of been hearing and then your reporting bore out that there have been complaints about Rob Curley since, you know, Rachel Alexander in your story is a named source who says she quit in 2018 as a result of Rob Curley's interference and just the way he ran the newsroom.

He'd only been in Spokane for two years at that point.

So why do you think it took so long to get to this point?

And I think what really accelerated everything was this transition to Kama.

And with that so imminent, I think that's kind of what heightened everyone's attention to the newsroom.