liberty principle pac

ref

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/illinois_pac_newspapers.php

When reports first surfaced that a Republican PAC was spending money on his behalf, Chris Harris wasn’t happy.Harris, a Democrat running to unseat an incumbent in today’s primary for a state legislative district just west of Chicago, put out a statement disavowing the support and distancing himself from Bruce Rauner, the state’s Republican governor, who has backed the PAC.

But when the fruit of some of the PAC’s spending became apparent, Harris didn’t seem to mind. The *West Cook News*,a new local “newspaper” in western Cook County, offers short stories on school boards, pet safety, and infrastructure reports—oh, and front-page editorials blasting his opponent, Chris Welch, along with lengthy looks at years-old accusations against Welch. The paper’s print version is funded byLiberty Principles PAC, which is run by Dan Proft, a conservative radio personality and Rauner ally.

Harris, though, doesn’t see a problem with it. “The coverage of this race is just a small component of that paper,” he told me, adding that the PAC-funded paper was no “opinion rag.” (Welch did not return telephone calls seeking comment.)

Not everyone agrees. But whatever you make of it, if the paper and a group of others launched at the same time do stay around—and Proft said they will—they seem like a notable development: the revival, at the hyperlocal level, of the partisan press. Or maybe we should call it the PAC press now.

In many ways, the papers function as standard election mailers. They are delivered by mail to registered voters and left in high traffic areas for people to pick up;support for Harris notwithstanding, the favored candidates are largely Republicans.

In addition to coverage of the campaign, they provide standard community news (such as an adult-themed Easter Egg Hunt) and updates on the minutiae of library boards and zoning boards. They have also published stories on local pensions and property taxes—some bland, and others more pointed or one-sided, with an emphasis on runaway spending.

proft, whoonce ran for governor himself, is upfront that he has an agenda. He said the papers are designed to cover issues ignored by other media and also to influence policy and elections. In an interview, he defended the integrity of the content in the publications, even as he argued against the basic idea that journalism could be objective or disinterested.

“You tell me if those are slanted or unfair stories or stories not properly sourced,” he said. “If you think because I’m a conservative that it’s right-wing propaganda, I will let the work product speak for itself.”

Mainstream news outlets “pretend that they are just objective scribes detailing the passing scene, and they’re not,” he continued. “Everybody has a perspective. Everybody has an agenda. I’m transparent about mine.” (And, as he told the*Daily Herald*, the leading daily devoted to the region: “If another candidate doesn’t like our newspaper, they can start their own.”)

If Proft’s motives are clear, the source of the content is a little less so. The “About Us” section of the online version of the papers credits Locality Labs, which according to Bloomberg publishes Blockshopper, an online real estate and data news site. A web search for Locality Labs leads to the site for LocalLabs, the corporate descendant of the troubled hyperlocal content creator Journatic, which is owned by the media entrepreneur Brian Timpone.

Some content on the websites is directly attributed to LocalLabs News Service, including a story in the McHenry Timesthat describes**government pensions**as “at best, despicably exorbitant.” But Ben Ashkar, chief operating officer for LocalLabs and a former account executive with Journatic, said the PAC is not a client of the company. (He didn’t reply to a follow-up questions about why the sites cite Locality Labs.)

Meanwhile, Proft told me that a separate company,Newsinator, is responsible for the content. Little is known about Newsinator, whose registered agent in Illinois is Andrew J. McKenna Jr., the former chairman of the state Republican Party.

In another wrinkle, the publications have recently been the subject of complaints to the state board of elections. At a hearing Monday, the board did not find that the PAC had engaged in illegal coordination with the candidates it is supporting. But it did find that better attribution of the connection between the PAC and the newspapers was needed, said James Tenuto, assistant executive director of the election board.

Scott L. Althaus, a political science professor and director of the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said it’s hard to know how effective the papers might be in achieving their goals. Mainstream media outlets, after all, know all too well the declining influence of print, and it’s hard to see the digital version of West Cook News catching on in a big way.

On the other hand, there is not a lot of coverage of individual local legislators from other sources, and people tend not to know much about these campaigns. There may be an opening to reach some voters.

Madeleine Doubek, chief operating officer for ReBoot Illinois, worries that most readers will not make the connection between the PAC and what they are reading.

“This looks to me like very questionable and not professional journalism,” Doubek said. “I’m not seeing any bylines. There’s not the balance there in the stories that I’ve seen or all sides of the story. It looks to me like a piece of campaign literature masquerading as a newspaper.”

Jackie Spinner is CJR’s correspondent for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. She is an associate journalism professor at Columbia College Chicago and aformer staff writer for The Washington Post. Follow her on Twitter @jackiespinner.

see below for local news relevance :

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/automated-donors-to-gop-campaigns-are-smashing-fec-limits-and-making-headlines-on-fake-news-websites/

in recent weeks, a number of political campaigns and committees have received letters from the Federal Election Commission notifying them that they may have violated federal rules and regulations governing campaign finance, such as inaccurately reporting expenditures or accepting campaign donations in excess of the legal limit from dozens of people.

These letters are not uncommon, and not necessarily indicative of wrongdoing — the assumption is that campaigns want to follow the rules but may have made mistakes in the heat of the contest. When the FEC notifies a campaign that it has taken too much money from donors, for instance, the letter lists the names and donation histories of the supporters who gave too much, so the campaign can isolate the over-limit amounts and refund, reattribute or redesignate that money. They have 60 days to do this before they must report back to the FEC.

Some of those lists this year, however, have been exceptionally long — a phenomenon that election experts attribute to automated recurring donations over a long and particularly intense campaign season.

For instance, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., received two separate notices last week, one of them 38 pages long and the other 41 pages. Each flagged excessive contributions from around 60 donors, for adjacent reporting periods. Her colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, received a nine-page list that alone flags a total well above $150,000 in excessive donations that the campaign must explain to the FEC.

In a similar letter to President Trump's re-election campaign last month, the FEC flagged more than 35,000 contributions from 1,045 donors, totaling more than $4.5 million in donations that the campaign needs to explain and reconcile. That list was 855 pages long. On Oct. 1, the FEC sent the campaign another letter flagging excessive donations, this one 814 pages long.

In a similar letter to President Trump's re-election campaign last month, the FEC flagged more than 35,000 contributions from 1,045 donors, totaling more than $4.5 million in donations that the campaign needs to explain and reconcile. That list was 855 pages long. On Oct. 1, the FEC sent the campaign another letter flagging excessive donations, this one 814 pages long.

"You have to consider the possibility that some of these serial donors may not have fully appreciated what they were doing when they signed up for recurring contributions," Kappel said.

The McSally notices illustrate this point. The contribution history of one single recurring donor, Bruce P. Bengtson, accounts for more than 10 full pages, or 25% of the list. Other donors take up multiple pages, such as Bill Deaton, whose name appears on 215 line items in one letter.

Deaton, founder of a Kentucky-based data-processing company, was fined $1 million and sentenced to a year of home detention in a federal fraud case in 2010. FEC records show he has contributed $6,706 to McSally this year. The individual limit for a full election cycle is $5,600.

The Graham campaign also appears to have erred in some of its bookkeeping, according to the FEC, and the Harrison campaign needs to explain several donors with foreign addresses and three sources identified as "possible prohibited entities." (While the letter does not elaborate on the latter, one of the names — PCCC, LLC — appears to have been identified as a difficult-to-trace entity in a Center for Public Integrity analysis of 2016 donations to Hillary Clinton.)

One of the over-limit donors to Graham, who has taken to begging for campaign cash in recent Fox News appearances, was Washington attorney Ty Cobb,formerly a lawyer for Trump during the Russia investigations. Cobb has given Graham $1,000 above the $2,800 general election maximum.

A handful of names, however, are on the lists for both Graham and McSally. All those people, according to FEC searches, appear to be retirees. A closed-quote Google search of these donors brings up something unusual: Their names also appear in the headlines of what look like online news articles announcing their donations.

For instance, a man named Henry L. Collins III gave $4,350 to Graham's campaign between April 30 and June 30, in a series of dozens of donations between $50 and $500. During that same period, he gave $4,425 to McSally. FEC records show that as of July 15, Collins had contributed a total $14,745 to McSally, nearly $10,000 above the individual limit, and as of June 30 had given about $8,400 to Graham, an excess of $2,800.

On July 1, Collins' name was featured in a headline for an article in something calling itself PHX Reporter that read: "Martha McSally's campaign committee receives $2,705 from Henry L. Collins III."

But PHX Reporter is identical to another site called Western South Dakota News, which on July 14 announced Collins' $500 contribution to Liz Marty May, a Republican congressional candidate. (Collins did not reply to Salon's request for comment.)

For that matter, Western South Dakota News looks exactly like the Treasure Coast Sun, which looks like the Columbia Standard — a site that published stories about individual contributions to both Graham and Harrison. Collins' name appears in a list of top donors for the month of May on a Columbia Standard article — and three other donors on the list appear to have exceeded the legal limit with contributions from that month alone.

These sites are part of a larger network of what could fairly be described as fake news sites — webpages that publish algorithm-driven content, much of it anonymous and automated, targeted at hyper-local audiences. Those networks of sites — dubbed "pink slime," a play on "yellow journalism" — have tripled in size as Election Day approaches. And they're part of an even larger network, connected to a conservative PAC.

That network, however, also appears to publish campaign refunds at times. One repeat McSally donor who spoke with Salon said that he had been refunded money multiple times over the last year, most recently last week, after the McSally campaign's most recent FEC letter. Earlier refunds made it into the pink slime headlines. The latest news apparently has yet to break.

The McSally, Graham and Harrison campaigns declined to comment for this article.

ref1

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/as-election-looms-a-network-of-mysterious-pink-slime-local-news-outlets-nearly-triples-in-size.php

tHE RUN-UP TO THE 2020 November elections in the US has produced new networks of shadowy, politically backed “local news websites” designed to promote partisan talking points and collect user data. In December 2019, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism:{reported on an intricately linked network of 450 sites:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: purporting to be local or business news publications. New research from the Tow Center shows the size of that network has increased almost threefold over the course of 2020, to over 1,200 sites.

Identifying these new sites is a result of further analysis of the closely linked entities with conservative ties illustrated in Figure 1 (below). The Tow Center focused predominantly onMetric Media, Franklin Archer, Local Government Information Services (LGIS), and Locality Labs. Both Metric Media and Franklin Archer claim to be the largest local news provider in the US, though many of their sites have low visibility in both search and social media. Over 90 percent of their stories are algorithmically generated using publicly available data sets or by repurposing stories from legitimate sources.

In the remaining stories that have an authentic byline there is often a conservative bent. As reported by the *Lansing State Journal* and The Guardian, [guk] this includes articles about voter fraud using data from the Heritage Foundation, negative pieces about elected Democratic representatives, and stories supporting conservative candidates. This low-cost automated story generation has come to be known as**pink slime journalism**. In addition to the hundreds of titles that ape the look and feel of local news, our research has detected new sites in this network that address single subjects, appeal to religious orientation, and focus on business news.

no pix ]Figure 1: The organizational structure of the network]

The recent increase in activity is in line with the election cycle. It is becoming an increasingly common campaign strategy for pacs and single-interest lobbyists to fund websites that borrow credibility from news designto help advance particular agendas. The proliferation of politically funded local news sites across the political spectrum raises questions about how these entities represent themselves to the public, and how they are categorized by search engines and social platforms.

The number of news media properties funded by often obscure political interests has been growing for a number of years and will reach a new peak in the 2020 election cycle. A recent report from Open Secrets highlighted “dark money” networks funded by liberal-leaning donors. Academics Jessica Mahone and Phil Napoli recently plotted some of these known entitieson a mapto show the geographic concentration of the networks. But the definitions of what constitutes a politically funded network are hard to establish, particularly if the financial and ownership structures are not clear.

A :{recent report from :(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{Politico:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:* outlined how Courier Newsroom, a group of politically affiliated local news sites, was spending large amounts of advertising money on Facebook on articles promoting Democratic candidates. Establishing how politically funded networks are intrinsically different from news organizations with strong political affiliations such as Breitbart or Fox News is often difficult.Politically funded networks can appear on Facebook pages classified as “Media/News company,” and articles from partisan sites are indexed by Google News.

Today, along with further analysis of this network, we are publishing the full list of websites, the geographic focus of each publication where one exists, and the corresponding organizational entity each site belongs to. However, due to the convoluted connections between these organizations, precise ownership is difficult to establish. Often a site will carry different information about its provenance on its “About” page, its Facebook page, and in the terms and conditions it publishes on its own site.

The overlapping networks seem designed to confuse casual observers as to their provenance and ownership, and delineations between them are fuzzy.The publishers involved are incorporated in different states, have different business models, and provide different services. However, they all share certain distinguishing traits that suggest close overlapping relationships, such as the same authors, story templates, analytics identifiers, and other technological resources.

to identify these new sites and the evolution of the networks, we adopted the same techniques we used for our investigation in December, relying heavily on third-party tools like RiskIQ and Farsight DNSDB.

In our latest research, we found the vast majority of the domains were under the umbrella of Metric Media, a Delaware limited-liability company that is a division of Situation Management Group. Metric Media properties now account for over 960 sites, or 80 percent of all the domains we’ve identified that belong to this network. All publishing is done “under a licensing agreement with the Metric Media Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit news content provider.”

Over seven hundred of these local sites have been activated in 2020, pointing to a sharp acceleration in activity in the lead-up to the November elections. The new activity has seen a host of titles such as the Philly Leader and San Francisco Sun added to the network, with the number of states expanding from ten to all but one. (While Metric Media doesn’t have any titles for Illinois, LGIS does.)

Beyond Metric Media’s rapid expansion, our research showed that Franklin Archer had also expanded the number of networks under its umbrella. The organization boasts that it is “the largest producer of local news in the United States,” with 200-plus active websites and two networks: Metro Business Network and Local News Network. A third network, American Catholic Tribune Media Network, was created in March 2020. There are currently six sites in the network, including the American Catholic Tribune. Further, Franklin Archer products now also include a handful of stand-alone titles that are either single-subject (e.g., Current Science Daily) or geographically focused on specific towns or neighborhoods (e.g., West Loop Today), as well as two podcasts hosted by the Freedom Media Network. Franklin Archer also lists public relations activities on its website, where user testimonials boast about the effectiveness of sponsored content as a marketing tool. [pix]

Evolution and Sprawl of the Network in 2020

The bulk of sites that went live in 2020 are under the Metric Media banner. In 2019, when we were first looking at Metric Media, its:{stated goal:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: was to launch “hundreds [of sites] nationwide to inform citizens about news in their local communities.” Today, the language on the same page indicates it has reached the goal of creating “hundreds” of sites. A:{website:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: lists its publications by state, along with a one-line explanation of what the company is: “a digital firm managing the online presence of the portfolio of local news sites known as Metric Media.” Based on passive DNS data (RiskIQ and DNSDB Scout),by the end of January 2020, Metric Media had publications devoted to all but one of the forty states that weren’t already covered in 2019; the domains for these were registered in the second half of 2019. The one exception was Illinois, which we cover in more detail further down.

Some sites cover entire states, whereas others are devoted to specific cities and metropolitan areas. The nomenclature is often formulaic, combining compass directions with the names of the states or cities and then generic terms for news publications. Site names include SW Oklahoma News, NE Ohio Times, and West SFV Today (in California’s San Fernando Valley). Many major cities get their own “wire” publication: Detroit City Wire, Dallas City Wire, Seattle City Wire.

Figure 3: Metric Media and LGIS# sites per state

Figure 3 illustrates the number of publications present in each state. Rhode Island has the fewest devoted to it (four), California the most (seventy-four). We didn’t find any publications for either of these two states in 2019; in fact, we only found Metric Media properties in ten states then. Now there are sites covering forty-nine states; only Illinois and Washington, DC, are absent from the Metric Media network.

The absence of Illinois publications may have a relatively simple explanation: LGIS, a stand-alone corporation devoted to covering Illinois since 2015, is part of the extended network, with connections to Metric Media. LGIS has:{ties to conservative figures in the state:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:, including Dan Proft and Brian Timpone. Proft, who through his pacs:{has raised millions to back conservative candidates:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: in Illinois,:{shut down two :{pac:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-caps:small-caps"):}:s earlier this year:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:. Timpone has a long history creating businesses focusing on automated low-cost journalism (or “pink slime” journalism), including the:{controversial Journatic:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: and its successor:{Locality Labs:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:. Locality Labs appears to be the organization creating the technology that allows for the automation of news stories using publicly available data sets across this entire ecosystem of 1,200 websites. One of Proft’s now-shuttered pacs has paid one of Timpone’s other companies, Newsinator, for “Advertising – newspaper,” according to campaign finance records.

Until December, the:{About Us:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: page of the Illinois sites stated they were a “product of LGIS—Local Government Information Services,” while the:{Terms of Service:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: and:{Privacy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: pages indicated they were properties of Locality Labs LLC. As of March, however, the:{Terms of Service:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: and:{Privacy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: pages are blank. The language on their:{About Us:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: pages hasn’t changed, maintaining that the sites are part of LGIS and funded in part “by advocacy groups who share our beliefs in limited government.” (Most of the Illinois websites have similar language in their About Us pages, where they mention details specific to the publication, and then details about the objectives of LGIS and its funding. However, for some sites, like the:{Grundy Reporter:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: and:{Southern Illinois News:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:, the About Us pages have been blank since at least last year, based on snapshots in the Internet Archive.)

In March, these Illinois sites adopted the same website theme (and thus the same look and feel) as the sites that Metric Media explicitly states it runs.

Additionally, Metric Media has at least two single-subject sites: Insurance Rate Reporter and Education Daily Wire. The About Us page for the former is blank, but its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages say the site is operated by Metric Media LLC. Education Daily Wire’s Privacy and Terms of Service pages are blank, but its About Us page says it’s funded by the Metric Media Foundation. These publications are not mentioned on either Metric Media website: the LLC or the foundation.

Also absent from any Metric Media website are the fifty-one Metro Business Network publications operated by Metric Media LLC, per their privacy policies and terms of service. According to the:{Metro Business Network site:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:, these publications “aim to cover news from Fortune 500’s to SMB’s on Main Street [sic].” While the site does not mention anything about the ownership or funding of these publications, the Privacy Policy and Terms pages state that the network is operated by Locality Labs.

Tracing the ownership of sites within the network is made more complicated by how the sites label themselves on Facebook. The Facebook pages for the business news sites include information about the page owner, which is where information about news and media properties on the platform can be found. However, sites within the same subnetwork (Metro Business Network, in this case) have different confirmed page owners, and in a handful of cases, no confirmed owner at all. Those with confirmed page ownership are split between Franklin Archer and Metric Media, and while the addresses for the two owners are different, their phone number is the same. The social presence of the network is very small, with negligible interactions (followers, likes, and shares) on each page.

Franklin Archer, a fictitious name for Iowa-incorporated DirecTech LLC, “brings coverage to underreported areas of American life,” according to its website. It has two networks: the “Metro Business Daily Network” and the “Local News Network.” As reported by*:{The Guardian:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*, the CEO of Franklin Archer is Timpone’s brother, Michael Timpone. On the corporate front, the relationship between Metric Media LLC and Franklin Archer remains unclear, but they appear to share not only technology resources and authors, but also the publications themselves. To wit, as can be seen below in Figure 4: at the time of writing, the Arizona Business Daily is owned by Franklin Archer, according to Facebook, and the Michigan Business Daily by Metric Media LLC. The New Jersey Business Daily has no confirmed page owner.

[pix]

2020, a third network was added to the Franklin Archer portfolio, although it is not mentioned on its website: the American Catholic Tribune Media Network, which includes five state-specific publications (in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, and Arizona) and one national one (the American Catholic Tribune). These sites relay information about parishes and churches, including updates on how various churches intend to conduct Mass every week. Earlier this year, the sites mentioned they are “a product of Franklin Archer,” but that disclaimer no longer exists. Their Facebook pages, however, state they are owned by Franklin Archer.

These sites follow the exact same model as all the other sites in the extended network: rewrite original reporting from existing sources, including diocesan newspapers, repurpose announcements (including Mass timings and homilies) published by various churches under the guise of “press release submissions,” and sprinkle on some original reporting.

:{Yet another new product of Franklin Archer is the Freedom Media Network, which hosts podcasts and a YouTube channel with just under a thousand subscribers. The channel is described as “your source for positive news and content aimed at helping you become more purposeful, productive, and prosperous.” One of the podcasts, Freedom Mindset Radio, is rife with anti-science positions,}:{the suggestion that getting a diagnosis is dangerous, as “they’re labeling a bag of symptoms.” The YouTube videos started being uploaded in January, and the website went live in March. }:

One-off sites continue to be created alongside these dedicated networks and channels. Sites created since our last investigation include the Neighbourhood Guardian, West Loop Today, the Midland Times, and Current Science Daily.

If you have examples of similar networks operating in your area or would like access to more granular data, please get in touch with us here.

ref 2

https://mainebeacon.com/anonymous-maine-news-site-tied-to-conservative-pac-funded-network/

at first glance, Maine Business Daily seems like some kind of local corporate newsletter, combining niche industry reports, localized data summaries, and press releases from regional Maine Chambers of Commerce. The earliest articles on the site date back to spring 2018 and the vast majority of the articles are attributed to anonymous bylines “Maine Business Daily reports” or “Local Labs News Service.”

However, nestled amid the banal business reporting are two recent stories on the allegations that Democratic Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, who is mounting a challenge to U.S. Senator Susan Collins, violated campaign finance rules. Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine GOP, is quoted heavily in the posts, which are attributed to West Virginia-based freelance journalist Kyla Asbury (and are the only stories on Maine Business Daily that have an actual name as a byline).

The publication and promotion of these pieces raised some flags for Maine readers, with one Reddit user writing “I’ve never heard of Maine Business Daily, but two of the top three articles in their ‘public policy’ section right now are political articles about Sara Gideon that have nothing to do with policy.”

Screenshot of a portion of the Maine Business Daily website featuring stories on House Speaker Sara Gideon.

Maine Business Daily’s “About” section also provides scant information about who is operating the site, though it does note that part of its mission is to “inspire productive discussion among policy makers, business leaders and the public.”

The Maine State Chamber of Commerce told Beacon that, despite the reposting of local chamber releases, it is not affiliated with the website.

The homepage of Maine Business Daily includes a link to theMetro Business Network, which lists 30 other state-based sites as part of its organization. According to its website, the Metro Business Network “provides a fresh take on business news. Launching in all 50 states plus DC, we aim to cover news from Fortune 500’s to SMB’s on Main Steet [sic].”

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow with Media Matters for America who specializes in conservative media infrastructure, says that these kinds of networks have flourished amid the decline of local news.

“As local newspapers get wiped out or bought out by big chains and reporters get laid off and chains try to seek efficiencies, you see a void around local news and these news networks try to fill that void,” Gertz said. “A lot of sites are providing information about local events that previously you would get from local newspaper, so you come for information about a local event and if you end up with some sort of ideological screed about the terrors of government, it’s a win for them.”

The Metro Business web

The Metro Business Network sites are uniform in appearance and content. The same stories appear across the entire network, with each “Education” page filled with versions of this story: “Graduates earn 91 degrees, certificates from the University of Maine at Machias” and each “Public Policy” section has a regional version of this one: “Maine ranks 3rd for rental car tax rates, study finds.”

Gertz said the content is likely being generated by an algorithm, which provides “a way to mass produce seemingly local content almost with no overhead, because you are paying no reporters to write stories but you can pump out a huge amount of stuff.”

Buried amid the posts, however, are partisan landmines such as this op-ed that appeared on numerous publications in the network, “Next Step in Dismantling Obamacare: Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB),” that concludes: “This is America. Rationing is for commies. Repeal IPAB now!” The column is written by notorious fake pollster and right wing conspiracy theorist Dean Chambers.

Other articles are more subtle, such as this Illinois news story arguing against the local minimum wage increase.

Anonymous news with a worldview

The website’s privacy policy states that Maine Business Daily and these other business news sites are operated by theDelaware-based Locality Labs, LLC, which, according to an April 2018 investigation by the Chicago Tribune, is owned by the conservative Chicago-based media entrepreneur Brian Timpone.

“A firm of Timpone’s called Journatic once used database mining and low-cost freelance writers to create hyperlocal news stories for the Tribune until complaints emergedof plagiarism and faked bylines,” the Tribune reported. That firm is “now known as Locality Labs.”

An earlier piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2016 revealed that Locality Labs, or Local Labs as it is often called, is part of a web of content creators, online and print publications run by Timpone and his cohorts that were accused of electioneering due to their coverage of and connection to candidates and political action committees. Some of Timpone’s news ventures received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from theLiberty Principles PAC, whose objective is to “support candidates for state and local offices who are committed to the economic liberty policy agenda.”

Ashbury, who authored the two stories on Gideon, has bylines published on other Locality Labs-owned sites, including the Cook County Record, West Virginia Record, and Legal Newsline — the website of which explains that its coverage is focused on how state court rulings impact the “legal landscape for corporate executives.”

Asbury’s LinkedIn profile says that for the past year she has worked as a freelance writer for a company called Interactive Content Services. The 2018 Tribune article said that another Trimpone-owned firm Newsinator “has a history of doing paid political work and offers marketing services to companies under the name Interactive Content Services.”

It’s not clear if the Liberty Principles PAC has a stake in Maine’s U.S. Senate race, or if it or another entity are funding the specific, anti-Gideon coverage. The articles feature no campaign finance disclosures.

This is not the first time an anonymous, conservative news site has been launched in Maine. In January 2018, evidence was released connecting Savage and the Maine Republican Party to the Maine Examiner, a then-anonymous publication which often published false and misleading attacks against Democratic candidates.