Homer Republican Rep. Sarah Vance got what she wanted, and now the Kenai Peninsula has four fewer working journalists.
Several journalists working for papers owned by the Carpenter Media Group resigned on Monday in protest of the company’s decision to summarily censor a story covering a Charlie Kirk vigil organized by Vance. Vance, who also made headlines last year for complaining that a hearing on tribal justice didn’t include enough white women, complained about the coverage and threatened the paper with a boycott.
“The consequence will be financial as well as reputational,” she said in a letter printed on legislative stationery and posted to her official Facebook account. “The future credibility of the Homer News and its advertising base depends on it.”
The story itself wasn’t particularly inflammatory, but it included context about Kirk’s place in American politics by describing him as “a far-right political activist and Christian-Nationalist icon.” As one of the state’s leading Christian Nationalist lawmakers, Vance took issue with those sections, and Carpenter Media — which has a reputation for buying up local papers and gutting them to install conservative top-down coverage — listened.
Vance’s effort to whitewash Kirk’s legacy and use his death to silence the media is part of a growing trend among right-wingers, who have launched a crusade to get teachers, professors, journalists and anyone else who didn’t mourn his death “properly” fired. While conservatives have held Kirk up as a paragon of free speech, they’ve bristled at others using their free speech to, in the case of the original Homer News story, describe a man who once said Black women don’t have “the brain processing power to be taken seriously” when talking about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as holding “racist and controversial views.”
Corporate media has also been quick to bow down to the right-wing efforts, which included The Washington Post’s firing of its last Black columnist for bringing up the frustrating handling of gun violence in this country and the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for suggesting that the right would use Kirk’s death to silence opponents.
More: Alaska GOP Rep. Vance threatens boycott of Homer News over Charlie Kirk coverage
No note or explanation of the changes was attached to the censored story, nor was the staff ever consulted about the changes. Altering a published story, particularly when there are no factual errors, is a gross violation of journalistic norms. The staff said in a co-signed letter that it was no longer tenable for them to continue working if their work was subject to political whims.
“Leaving these newspapers, at which we have spent a combined four decades, is not a decision we make lightly,” said the letter. “We are proud of the work that we do covering local government as well as arts, food, history, outdoors and sports. Though this decision is extremely painful for all of us, it is not difficult. We cannot do our jobs knowing that pressure from an elected official can mean our stories are edited without prior consultation with us.”
The letter was co-signed by Homer News reporter Chloe Pleznac (whose work was censored), Peninsula Clarion reporter Jake Dye, Peninsula Clarion sports and features editor Jeff Helminiak, and Erin Thompson, who was the regional editor of the Homer News, Peninsula Clarion and Juneau Empire. Much of the Juneau Empire editorial staff resigned earlier this year and started their own non-profit newsroom, The Juneau Independent.
An independent Kenai-focused outlet, though, isn’t in the works right now, Dye told Kenai-based radio KSRM on Monday.
“I wish I could tell you we were all leaving to start some new exciting nonprofit newsroom, but that’s just not in the cards right now,” Dye said. “We’re tired. We’re sad. But we couldn’t stay.”
Also: Vance hires Arkansas hardliner against abortion, LGBTQ+ rights as staffer
Dye told the station that the censorship was a breaking point in the paper’s slide following Carpenter Media’s 2024 acquisition of the paper. He said they’ve mismanaged the paper and failed to make needed investments.
“The Clarion shutting down was always inevitable. I’m kind of glad that we were the ones walking away — not letting them be the ones to shut us down,” he said. “This community doesn’t need a big old empty building called the Peninsula Clarion. It needs local news.”
The journalists had agreed to work through Oct. 13 to ensure a smooth transition to new staff, but all those who signed the resignation notice were locked out of their accounts by the end of Monday.
For her part, Vance celebrated the censorship as the beginning of a new era for Homer News’ coverage of the community she was elected to represent.
“Thank you to the owners of the Homer News and Carpenter Media for their thoughtful and professional response to my concerns about biased reporting,” Vance said in a follow-up post. “I deeply appreciate their willingness to listen and improve, which reflects respect to the community.”
It’ll be hard to do with just one remaining journalist at what is, as Dye told KSRM, “the ruins of two newspapers.”
But perhaps that’s the point.
The resignation letter
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
