Michigan newspaper editor who chronicled Ottawa County upheaval fired after trying to staff 'ghost' papers

DETROIT — A west Michigan newspaper editor who earned kudos for her blow-by-blow coverage of Ottawa County government’s takeover by right-wing activists last year said she has been fired by her employer, Gannett Co.

The removal of Sarah Leach as group editor of the Holland Sentinel and two dozen other newspapers came after she vented to a journalist at the nonprofit media site Poynter that Gannett's promised hires for news positions had not materialized for months, as selected job candidates waited on offers.

Without outing Leach, the Poynter reporter asked Gannett whether they had indeed “paused” an initiative to restaff the company’s smallest daily papers, some of which had dwindled to just one or no local news reporters.

Days later, Leach was summoned to a video call with her supervisor, accused of sharing proprietary info with a competitor and abruptly dismissed, she said. She suspects Gannett reviewed her emails internally to identify the leak.

When asked about this, a company spokeswoman declined to comment on personnel matters.

“I was asked, ‘Why did you do this?’ And I just stared at the screen for a long time because it was difficult to process what this moment was,” Leach recounted.

“I admitted that I had a phone call with this person, you know, because I am dying. I have been asking for resources, and I'm doing my best to try to serve these communities to the best of my ability, and I feel like I can't. … Then I was informed that was my last day.”

Leach oversaw news operations at the Holland Sentinel and 25 other newspapers across four states — 15 in Michigan, eight in Wisconsin, two in South Dakota and one in Minnesota — the largest group within Gannett’s Center for Community Journalism division.

She handled budgeting, hiring, goal-setting and managed overtime. Short-staffed on local editors, she was also editing and managing reporters at three of the newspapers herself: the Daily Telegram in Adrian, the Hillsdale Daily News and the Monroe News.

Gannett is a publicly traded company and the nation's largest newspaper publisher. It also owns the Detroit Free Press and manages the Detroit Media Partnership, which runs the combined business operations of the Free Press and The Detroit News. The News, however, is separately owned by MediaNews Group.

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