The trench project -- which is now undergoing environmental impact studies -- will be funded in part by a sales tax increase passed in 1999 by the Washoe County commission, without a vote of the people. Jim Galloway, the lone commissioner who opposed the tax increase and estimates the project could cost as much as $400 million, says the Reno Gazette has targeted him ever since, criticizing him on unrelated matters -- for example, writing "one of the most vicious editorials I've ever seen in my life" after an insignificant vote he made on a special-use permit application.
Recently, Galloway says, there was a case in a rural part of his county where a newspaper owner bought a brothel. Galloway has more respect for that guy than for Clark-Johnson; he says the brothel owner signed an agreement creating a firewall so the business of the brothel and the business of the newspaper would be kept entirely separate.
courtesy of Pat Murphy
Former publisher Pat Murphy: "I think in recent years the Republic has lost a lot of its bite."
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Not so with the Reno Gazette, he insists. Galloway points to examples of so-called censorship reported by the Reno News & Review. For example, a Reno economist named Gary Horton who produced a report predicting cost overruns for the trench project could not get coverage in the Reno Gazette; when he wrote a letter complaining and criticizing Clark-Johnson, he was reportedly told that a condensed version would be printed, but ultimately the paper refused.
Galloway's interpretation of the Reno Gazette's position: "You accuse us of censorship, so we're censoring your letter!"
When Reno News & Review writer D. Brian Burghart set out in 1997 to ask Clark-Johnson if she perceived her directorship with Harrah's to be getting in the way of publishing a newspaper, he spoke to Rollan Melton, a Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime Reno Gazette-Journal columnist who at one time had served on Gannett's board of directors.
"I've never seen one conflict of interest" regarding Clark-Johnson and Harrah's, Melton told Burghart.
But last year, Melton made the pages of the Reno News & Review again. This time, the story was about how the Reno Gazette had spiked one of Melton's columns -- the first in his 21 years as a columnist. The topic? Harrah's.
According to the Reno News & Review, which obtained a copy of the piece, the column addressed two topics: the demolition of the historic Mapes Hotel in downtown Reno and poor treatment of a club Melton belongs to, the Reno Prospectors, which meets at Harrah's.
"They're treating us like mongrels," the column reportedly said about Harrah's.
Both topics are close to Clark-Johnson's heart. The Harrah's connection is obvious, and in addition, as publisher of the Reno Gazette, she took an active interest in downtown redevelopment interests, even creating a task force called "One Region. One Vision" that has drawn criticism from many local activists.
Did Clark-Johnson kill Melton's column? Melton refused to comment, and Reno Gazette editors didn't return Burghart's calls. Executive editor Tonia Cunning didn't return New Times' call, either. It doesn't matter, says Jake Highton, an ethics professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada's Reno campus and a longtime observer of Clark-Johnson. Perception does.
"You cannot be in a compromising position. As Pulitzer said years ago, a newspaper should have no friends."
Highton is no fan of the Reno Gazette. He calls it a third-rate newspaper that buries good stories, if it reports them at all, and coddles local institutions -- not just the casinos, but the university and other public entities, too.
"They just don't want to rock the boat," Highton says, but "the fact is, they all need to be criticized. . . . By God, government's the enemy, casinos are the enemy."
Instead, he says, "There's just not enough criticism and you're just not going to get it because editors lean the way publishers lean -- that's simply a fact."
Last week, Clark-Johnson told the Republic that she resigned from her position at Harrah's because she was moving to Phoenix. "I had a hard time really understanding what the issue was because newspaper publishers traditionally have been involved in many activities and organizations outside of the newspaper," she told her new paper.
Whatever her reason, Reno city council candidate Mike Robinson and the other Clark-Johnson watchers see the publisher's departure from Harrah's as a small victory.
"Maybe it does have to do with our discontent here," Robinson says.
After all, Harrah's does own a property in the Phoenix area, too.
