Jeff Egbert, publisher of the Pinckneyville Press, acknowledges that he can be accused of grinding axes when he complained to the Illinois Press Association about rigged contest results.
Egbert says the IPA drew his ire last year when the association helped arrange the sale of a dozen southern Illinois newspapers that otherwise would have gone out of business. The papers, including the Du Quoin Evening Call in Perry County, the same county where Pinckneyille is located, were owned by GateHouse Media, which sold the publications last summer to Paddock Publications, a newspaper company based in Arlington Heights that is best known for publishing the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago.
Egbert says the deal cost him money because legal notices that must be published in newspapers of record in any given county can continue being published in the Du Quoin paper. Had the Evening Call folded, Egbert says that his paper stood to realize increased revenue from legal notices.
“The IPA stepped in and made sure my competitor stayed in business,” Egbert says. “Someone mentioned to me, ‘This isn’t the fi rst time the IPA screwed me over.’” That, Egbert says, is when he learned about contest rigging.
The IPA acknowledges helping save papers it believed might go under. IPA president Dennis DeRossett said the association, at the request of GateHouse, stepped in to help fi nd a buyer for the endangered newspapers.
“The story of our industry right now is, it’s a dying industry,” DeRossett said. “That [closure of the GateHouse papers] would have obviously fueled fi re to that story, not just in Illinois, but nationwide. … Our mission is to basically enhance the journalistic and business interests of Illinois newspapers.”
Sandy Macfarland, chairman of the IPA board of directors, wrote in an email that he wasn’t aware of the deal until it was consummated, but he defends it.
“The IPA is proud to have played a role in identifying a buyer for those newspapers so they can continue to serve thousands of readers in dozens of Illinois communities,” Macfarland wrote.
At the time of the deal, executives employed by both the Daily Herald and GateHouse were on the IPA board. Asked about the potential for conflicts of interest, Don Craven, IPA general counsel, said that he doesn’t recall either GateHouse or Daily Herald executives participating in discussions about the transfer of GateHouse papers to the Daily Herald’s parent company.
Egbert accuses the IPA of profi ting from the deal. “The IPA made money on this as a broker,” Egbert says. “They made money on that newspaper sale, whether they want to admit it or not.”
DeRossett says that the IPA was paid expense money for legal work, including the drafting of confi dentiality agreements. He declined to say how much. –Bruce Rushton
