The Maine Trust for Local News needs to be schooled on the meaning of “conflict of interest.”
A new restaurant review in the state’s largest daily newspaper listed Miss Portland Diner among the 32 best eateries in Maine’s largest city.
The diner is owned by – drum roll – Stefanie Manning, who when she’s not flipping eggs is the trust’s top executive.
The food experts picking the paper’s 32 best food joints include restaurant owners, chefs and “food publicists.”
The owners of Fore Street and Leeward are among the “experts.”
What a shock that Fore Street and Leeward made the cut.
But when the president and publisher lists her own restaurant in the top hot picks, the bar is as low as it can go.
Manning’s diner is included in her newspaper’s choices for “the best places to hit your first meal of the day.”
Miss Portland Diner is where Manning hangs out when she’s not paying attention to the disaster that gets published every morning in Portland, Maine.
Which is all the time.
“There are few features we do at the Press Herald that generate as much discussion and heated debate as our annual list of the best restaurants,” said Katherine Lee, alleged news-and-culture editor.
Especially this year after subscribers realize the publisher is duping them by secretly promoting her own bacon.
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✓ The Maine Wire – 151,000 followers
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Portland Press Herald Lists Its Own CEO’s Restaurant As A Go-To Hot Spot For Breakfast
By Ted Cohen
There could be a legal issue here — if the trust is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit, and it’s resources I used to advertise the profit, making business of his director, that’s a sort of thing that gets 501(c)(3)s in trouble with the IRS.
The question then comes how they did their study
If it truly was an arms length, even if it was a poll of paid newspaper subscribers, then they’ll be OK as long as they mentioned the inherent conflict of interest and explain their methods of coming to the conclusion that the boss’ restaurant was the best.
but if they just say it is — even if it genuinely is — they potentially could have a problem here. I am not a tax lawyer. I do not speak for the IRS, or even the local coven of seagulls, but this man’s opinion is that there is an issue here…