A reclusive Swiss liberal billionaire whose cash helped buy Maine’s largest paper is now being targeted by several states over his alleged foreign financial influence on their elections.
The secretive Hansjorg Wyss created “dark money” nonprofits, seemingly to skirt the U.S. prohibition on foreign nationals influencing the ballot box, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
[RELATED: Mysterious Swiss Billionaire Spent $800 Million Bankrolling Left-Wing Causes, States Say No More]
So far so good, maybe – unless you don’t mind a guy whose sister once wrote that he’s trying to “(re)interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics” deciding what gets printed in Maine’s largest newspapers.
The national news site Semafor was the first reported confirmation that two long-time progressive donors – Wyss and George Soros – made earmarked donations to underwrite the 2023 purchase of several Maine newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald, by the National Trust for Local News, a Colorado-based non-profit now owning 65 newspapers across the country.
But now several states are putting their foot down legislatively on attempts by Wyss to do an end run around foreign-national influence.
The disclosure that he helped fund the purchase of dozens of Maine newspapers is a rarity because the trust has guarded its most controversial money sources with its life.
The Press Herald itself even once reported that “information about the donors who contributed to the purchase by a national nonprofit remains unclear.”
But even that lame story came a full week after The Maine Wire piece in 2023 on Semafor’s discovery.
Since then, further information on the trust’s funding sources has been as scarce as the Press Herald’s follow-up coverage.
Known supporters as of June included Open Society Foundations, American Press Institute, Bohemian Foundation, Brett Family Foundation, Democracy Fund, FJC: A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds, Heartland Fund, Klarman Family Foundation, The Lenfest Institute, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation, NewsGuild-CWA, Tides Nexus, and Way to Rise.
Just because Wyss Foundation and Berger Action Fund don’t appear on the list doesn’t necessarily mean Wyss isn’t furthering his political action through other hard-to-track newspaper funding sources, however.
Meanwhile, the trust in 2023 reported $46 million in annual revenue, including $25 million in contributions, with a net income of $21 million, according to its most recent federal IRS Form 990, filed five months ago.
A 501c3 nonprofit organization such as the trust is required to disclose contribution totals but not sources.
If the trust has any interest whatsoever in further disclosure of its contributors it wasn’t evident when it announced hiring a new CEO earlier this week.
The Press Herald actually quoted Tom Wiley as saying his priorities “include having good communication with the national trust’s employees and collecting data on its journalism and how it’s working.”
That nonsensical gobbledygook passive-voice gibberish right there has gotta be worth a million dollars to Wiley in bonuses.
The closest Wiley came to even mentioning financing was when he said he is “eager to meet potential donors and boost fundraising.”
The paper never pressed him on the trust’s continued – and so far hollow – promises to disclose more information about its financial sources.
During that same interview Wiley also refused to discuss his salary, despite his predecessor resigning in the wake of publicity about the massive salary hike over a two-year period that brought her compensation to $370,000.
Wiley’s closed-mouth approach mirrors that of the organization that just hired him to succeed ousted CEO Elizabeth Hanson Shapiro.
Rick Edmonds, a writer for the Poynter Institute who has done some of the best analysis on the trust’s problems, has said of the company, “organizational details of the trust and its holdings are opaque.”
If secrecy is the recipe for successfully running newspapers, the National Trust for Local News will do just fine.
But the reality is the trust by its own admission is losing money and even billionaires, i.e. Wyss, Soros, etc., don’t like to lose money.
So if the trust doesn’t quickly turn around its losses guess what’s going to dry up – the sources of its cash who want to see profits, not red ink.
