Former gaming industry reporter Howard Stutz and his ex-colleagues at the Las Vegas Review-Journal were named recipients of the 2015 Ethics in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists on Wednesday for their role in uncovering the mysterious sale of their newspaper last December.
According to the SPJ, the Ethics in Journalism Award is bestowed annually upon “journalists or news organizations that perform in an outstanding ethical manner demonstrating the ideals of the SPJ Code of Ethics.”
After being acquired by GateHouse Media in March 2016 for $102.5 million, the Review-Journal was again sold in December for $140 million to a Delaware-based shell corporation known as News + Media Capital Group.
Just who was behind this entity, however, was a mystery. In a meeting with R-J staff, a representative of News + Media would only say that “undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry” were behind the company.
The enigma of who had purchased the R-J, Nevada’s most-circulated newspaper quickly became a story of national interest. The paper’s intrepid team of reporters set out to discover who was now signing their paychecks – only to discover that the family of Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson was behind the deal.
The SPJ specifically lauded the hard work, personal sacrifices and professional risk incurred by the R-J journalists in pursuing this investigation.
“Despite obfuscation and obstacles from their new bosses, the team persevered and didn’t back down,” the SPJ stated in its award announcement. “Review-Journal journalists didn’t waver in their exposé and related coverage. But their commitment to truth, transparency and ethics was costly. They lost their jobs or left because of pressure.”
Aside from Stutz, the SPJ noted that fellow reporters James DeHaven, Eric Hartley and Jennifer Robison, editors Mike Hengel and Jim Wright and columnist John L. Smith all resigned in light of the sale.
Steve Majerus-Collins was also named as a co-recipient of the award along with the R-J team. He was a reporter for the Bristol Press in Connecticut – also owned by News + Media – but resigned upon discovering that his employer was involved in the questionable acquisition of the Las Vegas paper.
Majerus-Collins offered his resignation on Christmas Eve 2015 despite a precarious family financial situation and without another job lined up.
“The owner of my paper is guilty of journalistic misconduct of epic proportions,” he wrote in an open resignation letter on Facebook, dated December 24.
Stutz and his colleagues join a prestigious list of previous recipients of the SPJ award, including Allan M. Saigal of the New York Times and the late David Broder – the legendary Washington Post political reporter.
