‘I Don’t Pretend to Be an Experienced Journalist in All the Traditional Ways’ : CJR

The Niagara Falls Reporter is in the news again. The attention has dramatically increased the free weekly’s readership. It has also put a spotlight on publisher and editor in chief Frank Parlato’s unorthodox—perhaps even unethical—approach to journalism.

The 22,500-circulation paper (Niagara Falls, New York’s population is around 50,000) first attracted media attention in July, when Deadspin alerted readers to a column by Lenny Palumbo that contained anti-gay statements.

Now Parlato, a real-estate developer who purchased the paper from its founder in April, has come under fire after an email he wrote to the Reporter’s (now ex-)movie reviewer, Michael Calleri, was published in Roger Ebert’s “Our Far Flung Correspondents” blog on the Chicago Sun Times’s website.

Parlato wrote to Calleri that he didn’t “want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta. where [sic, etc.] women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females. i believe in manliness … In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.”

A statement like that is going to get people’s attention. That attention worked out well for Calleri: international exposure, a spot on CBS This Morning, plenty of plugs for his new movie-review column and radio show.

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