After "Scouts’ Honor" was published in the Idaho Falls POST REGISTER, powerful sectors of the community launched a public relations campaign against the newspaper, questioning the reporting and focusing on the sexual orientation of the series reporter, Peter Zuckerman.
Zuckerman describes being publicly outed and verbally attacked in an essay for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.
Then managing editor (now executive editor) Dean Miller also describes the fallout in an article for The Nieman Reports:
The Post Register is a wee dory of a newspaper: With 26,000 daily circulation, it's not buoyed by any corporate chain and has an opinion page often reviled in this livid corner of reddest Idaho for its reliable dissent.
Last year, by exposing Boy Scout pedophiles and those who failed to kick them out of the scouting program, we energized three of our community's big forces against us, including those most able to punish our newspaper - the community's majority religion, the richest guys in town, and the conservative machine that controls Idaho.
>> Read Dean Miller's article.
>> Read Peter Zuckerman's essay.
