Liberal firebrand Jim Hightower writes a column for Creators Syndicate.<\/p>\n
When he turned his pen on the private equity pukes sucking hte marrow out of journalism, they refused to carry it<\/a>:<\/p>\n Jim Hightower\u2019s latest column, \u201cFree the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers,\u201d takes on the corporate bottom-feeders picking apart what\u2019s left of America\u2019s newspapers. He names names, singling out Digital First Media and GateHouse Media, which recently purchased the Austin American-Statesman, as the worst offenders \u2014 \u201chedge-fund scavengers\u201d and \u201cruthless Wall Street profiteers out to grab big bucks fast\u201d by gutting newsrooms. Tough stuff. And apparently too tough for Creators Syndicate, the distribution firm that has long placed Hightower\u2019s column in various media outlets. <\/p>\n Last week, according to the <\/a>Austin Chronicle<\/a><\/i>, Creators informed Hightower that it would not be distributing his column out of fear of retribution from Digital First and Gatehouse. In an email to the Chronicle, Creators Managing Editor Simone Slykhous defended her decision, saying the company was only trying to protect Hightower. \u201cWe have more than 200 columnists and cartoonists, and our job is to make sure that our actions do not negatively impact them,\u201d Slykhous said. <\/p>\n Melody Byrd, Hightower\u2019s assistant, said Creators\u2019 decision was understandable, but troubling. <\/p>\n \u201cThe big, hedge-fund owned newspaper chains that Hightower calls out in his column are big customers of theirs, and as such, they don\u2019t want to risk offending them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut while Creators\u2019 reluctance to anger these powerful interests is somewhat understandable, the implications are frightening: It\u2019s one more example of this dangerous time for America\u2019s decreasingly free press that, ironically, Jim lays out in this very column.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Texas Observer<\/i> printed his article, and you should read it. It’s a real barn burner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Liberal firebrand Jim Hightower writes a column for Creators Syndicate. When he turned his pen on the private equity pukes sucking hte marrow out of journalism, they refused to carry it: Jim Hightower\u2019s latest column, \u201cFree the Free Press from Wall Street Plunderers,\u201d takes on the corporate bottom-feeders picking apart what\u2019s left of America\u2019s newspapers. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,456,464,523],"class_list":["post-178396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-finance","tag-good-writing","tag-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}