Media Mutt

The Sussman Effect
Do the political activities of MaineToday Media’s owner hurt his newspapers?

By Al Diamon

S. Donald Sussman, the majority owner of MaineToday Media, is the state’s largest individual donor to federal political causes. In recent months, Sussman – whose properties include the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel dailies – gave at least $1.35 million to a political action committee focused on electing Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, according to accounts in his own newspapers.

That ain’t all. Maine Citizens for Clean Elections has calculated that in the past decade (not counting most of this election year), he’s dumped $379,000 into state races, making him the biggest individual contributor to local politics, as well.

Since that report came out earlier this year, Sussman, a hedge-fund manager whose worth is estimated to be in the billion-dollar range, helped Democratic candidates for the Maine Legislature through PACs called The Committee to Rebuild Maine’s Middle Class ($10,000) and the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee ($75,000).

He backed this year’s same-sex marriage referendum to the tune of at least $100,000.

On the national level in this election cycle, he’s given $750,000 to Women Vote, a PAC that supports pro-choice candidates, and $250,000 to Planned Parenthood’s PAC.

He’s written checks to Young Democrats of America ($100,000), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ($30,800), Act Blue ($30,800) and Emily’s List ($5,000).

Those figures don’t include any donations made late in the campaign season, nor gifts to nonprofit advocacy groups that don’t have to report individual donors.

With the exception of that last item, all this information has been widely reported, most frequently in Sussman’s own papers, which have markedly improved their disclosure policies since he bought MaineToday earlier this year.

But that hasn’t stopped the criticism. It was a theme of Republican Jon Courtney’s unsuccessful 2012 campaign against Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who is Sussman’s wife. Courtney ran ads accusing Pingree and Sussman of “buying the news media and influencing elections here in Maine.”

Both charges are true, although the connection between them is tenuous.

In spite of Sussman’s pledge to have no role in news policy at MTM, he’s been blasted repeatedly for biased coverage on conservative blogs, such as As Maine Goes. Even a Republican moderate like state Sen. Roger Katz of Augusta is convinced Sussman’s presence in the board room has an impact on stories in his papers. In a February op-ed in the MaineToday papers, Katz wrote, “Sussman’s investment may be a positive development for the newspapers’ balance sheet, and that is good. But I worry it is a sad day for those of us who wake up every morning, go to the door and want to pick up an unbiased source of news to read with our morning coffee.”

It’s clear that a significant segment of the population, most vocally (but not exclusively) members of the GOP and other right-wingers, doesn’t trust the information they get from Sussman’s papers. But should anybody care about a cranky minority of old, white males, embittered by Republican losses in the recent election?

Well, maybe people who own newspapers ought to. According to news industry analyst Ken Doctor, writing on the Nieman Journalism Lab website, those old farts are the people who read daily papers.

“The newspaper audience looks remarkably like the arithmetic that put Mitt Romney on the losing end,” Doctor wrote. “The daily industry is doing okay with older, white people. … Among all other ethnic groups except Asian-Americans [due to high online usage] newspapers are underperforming.”

In other words, the people most likely to purchase Sussman’s newspapers are also those most likely to be offended by his political activities. Whether that accounts for all or some of the drastic declines in circulation MaineToday experienced over the past year is unclear.

Amy Fried, professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, said, “It’s an easy connection to draw. You can see the comments online by people claiming ownership has an impact. But those commentators may or may not be representative.”

Kelly McBride, ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, downplays the possibility of the owner’s politics having much impact. “I doubt if people care who owns their newspaper,” McBride said. “It doesn’t help if the owner brings additional liability, but I don’t think that’s a major factor [affecting circulation].”

Even if that’s correct, I wonder if the possibility has been broached in discussions in MTM’s executive offices. And if it has, has Sussman paid attention?

According to two people who talked with Sussman, before he bought the papers, about the negative impact his political activity could have, he barely acknowledged the issue. “You could tell it wasn’t something that concerned him,” said one, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was supposed to be confidential. “He just brushed it aside and moved on to something else.” The other person who brought the matter up with Sussman said, “He obviously didn’t see it as an issue, either ethically or from a business standpoint.”

But out in the real world, even some liberals wonder if Sussman could resist the urge to meddle if Pingree’s career or the fate of one of his pet causes were on the line. As one left-wing activist told me, “I love that he’s on our side, but I don’t trust rich guys.”

As noted earlier, Sussman’s papers have been careful to reveal his involvement in political affairs. That’s a refreshing change from the previous ownership under Richard Connor, who failed to acknowledge an important campaign contribution to a group advocating for an elected mayor in Portland, and often ignored business connections involving Robert C.S. Monks, one of MTM’s minority owners.

While complaints from conservatives about biased coverage at MaineToday have been unrelenting, both before and after Sussman bought the papers, actual evidence of it has been almost nonexistent. But the cloud of liberal activism that follows the big guy around can’t be dispelled by that fact.

“He has a really big target on his back,” Bob Steele, a journalism and ethics professor at DePauw University, said of Sussman. But Steele added, “Ownership situations are very complex. The equation has so many elements in it. It’s always wise to scrutinize the product to make sure there’s journalistic independence, but there are usually lots of forces at play. You have to be careful how you connect the dots” between an owner’s political activities and readership.

While political involvement has long been a part of newspaper ownership (witness the bizarre manipulations of content and the rants of the late William Loeb,conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader), owners’ political activism has become more restrained during the past couple of decades. But for Sussman to conform to that trend, he’d have to abandon numerous causes he obviously feels strongly about – and his wife would have to stop holding public office. Such major alterations in the Sussman family lifestyle seem unlikely.

It’s also unlikely the MaineToday papers could survive for long without the financial support of Sussman or someone like him. They were on the verge of bankruptcy when he bought them, and despite his investments in staff and technology, there’s little sign their bottom lines have improved.

With no indications that circulation will end its decline or the criticism will ease, it remains to be seen if Sussman is committed enough to his newspapers to sustain major financial losses in return for maintaining his freedom to throw his money wherever he thinks it’ll do the most good.

Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.