A former Juneau Empire reporter says she was fired when she refused to set up a meeting between the publisher and a legislator on a bill that affects newspapers.
Jennifer Canfield left her job as state capital reporter last week.
The last few years at the Empire have been marked by turnover and some uncertainty as its parent company struggled financially.
Municipalities buy space in newspapers to publish notices on certain information, like raising taxes, meetings, and foreclosures. House Bill 275 would give municipalities another option – publish the information electronically, to be accessed on a municipal website.
Rep. Mike Hawker is the main sponsor of the bill. He says it would empower municipalities to find the most cost effective way to operate.
“It’s information that we have determined that it is in the public necessity and good that it’s made available and, as time has progressed and moved forward, there are alternatives to the traditional newspaper route of publication that might actually even do a better and more efficient and effective job of informing a public.”
Juneau Empire publisher Ruston Burton disagrees.
“It’s a common legislative move that’s made in a lot of states, it’s been made before, trying to basically take public information and hide it behind a website that nobody goes to essentially.”
After state government reporter Jennifer Canfield pointed out the bill to Burton, he asked her to set up a meeting with Rep. Hawker. Burton said he intended Canfield be present at the meeting as well.
“In my mind, I’m thinking that as we’re sitting with him, she’s asking the questions – a reporter would be asking the questions about, you know, ‘Why are you wanting to push this bill? What’s the reason behind it? What instigated it to make you feel it was super important?’ It’s pretty simple. There’s somebody pushing a bill, we want to know why, and we’re going to tell the story about it.”
Reporter Canfield didn’t think it was so simple. She didn’t want to do it.
“There really needs to be a firewall between the business side and the editorial side and I think any journalist understands that implicitly,” says Canfield.
To Burton, it was just a meeting. He says the Empire has a financial stake if HB275 passes, but says his concern is not about the money. He says less than 1 percent of the paper’s total revenue comes from municipal notices.
“I didn’t think anything of it at the time when I asked and I didn’t expect such a push back on it either. I don’t know that there’s anything unethical about saying, ‘Hey we’re going to go talk to this guy that’s trying to push a bill and I want to be there when you’re talking to him and you can report the news.’”
Canfield made it clear she didn’t want to set up the meeting.
“It was insisted that I do it, and eventually the conversation got to the point where I was told that if I didn’t do it, our working relationship could not continue. I again expressed my ethical concerns and I was fired.”
Canfield says she got notice of her termination the day after being asked to set up the meeting. She says being fired is a direct consequence of her saying no.
“In our conversation it was pretty clear that was the reason.”
Burton says the two events are unrelated.
“A decision had been made long before there was ever anybody asking for a meeting with Hawker,” says Burton.
Canfield is not the first reporter to abruptly lose their job at the Empire. In 2012, state government reporter Pat Forgey was dismissed from the paper; he went on to cover the capitol for the Alaska Dispatch. His replacement at the Empire, Andrew Miller, quit after just one day, claiming the work environment was “dysfunctional.”
At the time of the interview, Burton still hadn’t set up an interview with Hawker but says he plans to.
Editor’s note: Story updated to clarify that Canfield initially notified Burton about the bill.
Lisa Phu is a reporter at KTOO in Juneau.
