MISSOULA — Lee Enterprises last week laid off long-time Missoulian reporter and editor Rob Chaney after 28 years at the newspaper.
Chaney, the statewide enterprise editor for Lee, said the company told him Friday morning that the year-end budget situation required eliminating his position less than a year after it was created.
Chaney joined the Missoulian as a staff reporter in 1997, and over the years covered local government, business, law enforcement, public education, science and the outdoors, reports the Montana Free Press.
After about two years as managing editor of the Missoulian, Chaney moved into the new statewide enterprise editor position in December 2023 when Steve Kiggins joined as executive editor of the Missoulian and director of Lee’s Montana newsrooms. Chaney said taking the job, which included writing his own stories and working with Montana reporters on bigger projects, was worth the risk.
“I knew it was a fairly unique position and likely experimental,” he said. “But it was also a chance to forge a new level of collaborative journalism here. And given the response from national journalism organizations that invited us to join their networks and provided their resources, it appeared successful.”
An internal email from Kiggins said Lee Montana newspapers would not cut any other positions but didn’t specify if open jobs would be eliminated, the Daily Montanan reported.
Attempts by Montana Free Press to reach Kiggins by phone were unsuccessful, and he did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lee Enterprises’ corporate office also did not return requests for comment.
Chaney’s new position was created to help Lee’s Montana papers cover more stories with statewide reach and influence, he said. Chaney helped win grants from national organizations, and about $60,000 in grant-funded reporting projects are underway at the Missoulian and other Montana papers, he said. Chaney said he hopes his departure doesn’t affect ongoing stories investigating a variety of concerns facing the state.
While Chaney doesn’t claim credit for making those stories happen, he said it’s easier with more “hands on the oars.” Chaney’s experience and history with some topics helped to get a few obstacles out of reporters’ way, he said.
“I really enjoyed the opportunity to help people see projects from a bigger perspective and across borders, across city lines,” he said. “I hope we keep doing that because Montana is a microcosm of the whole nation, and the stuff that happens here we can get our hands on and get deeper into than on the national level. We can do it better, and I hope we keep doing it.”
Following layoffs across Lee Enterprises’ Montana papers in April 2023, the Missoulian seemed to be on an upward trend recently, Chaney said.
In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Lee Enterprises saw an increase in digital revenue but a decrease in total operating revenue compared to last year, Poynter reported in early August.
Chaney said the entire news industry is “running blind in a whitewater river” as corporate business models that worked for decades no longer produce the same results.
“The business of telling people stories they need to know is always going to be in demand; we’re just arguing about the delivery system,” he said. “Nobody seems to have figured out a delivery system as reliable and as profitable as the old dead tree newspaper.”
Chaney said he stuck around through changes over nearly three decades because “I’m a storyteller, that’s what I do.”
“I love Montana, and I rode an opportunity to tell stories about Montana for as long as I could,” he said. “I’m going to keep doing that.”
After letting the dust settle on the major change, Chaney said he’ll see what new options are out there.
As of Tuesday, Chaney’s Facebook post announcing his layoff had received more than 200 comments, and the responses have been “lovely and really gratifying,” he said.
“There’s a joke that Montana is a mid-sized town with really long streets,” he said. “You hang around this place long enough and peoples’ stories become routines and histories and sometimes myths. But the memories all go back to the times everybody knew each other before the thing they’re doing now. It’s gratifying to see those connections staying strong.”
