Amplifying divisiveness and ignoring important stories that challenge power is the REAL role of local media, and today’s post will show readers why I don’t expect that role to change with a new city editor for the Missoulian, especially one I remember going to college with over two decades ago.
Yesterday, at the open house for the Downtown Safety, Access, and Mobility project (SAM), I told Jordan Hess (after introducing him to Pirate Booty) how lucky he was to have the kind of local media that TOTALLY IGNORES the fact that Missoula’s bus system, Mountain Line, embarrassingly lost a lawsuit a few months ago and had to pay over $20,000 dollars.
I also told Jordan Hess that those “leaning benches” by the homeless shelter that removed the part of the bench that people slept on were STILL stupid.
While the Missoulian focuses on the supposed “good” news that Mountain Line is getting Federal money to build a new headquarters for itself, the ONLY online outlet to highlight the Mountain Line lawsuit is the former Missoula radio show, Outerlimits, at their blog that still puts out reports on stuff every now and then. Here’s a quote from the article:
Norman says that while he sought to make the bus system better, his efforts were consistently met with resistance from company leadership. After he quit in 2023, Austin created a Facebook page to raise public awareness among Missoulians of the failures and dangers of Missoula’s “free” bus system. The page, Mountain Line, a Call For Transparency and Reform, has hundreds of followers and has succeeded in at least calling attention to problems that local newspapers and City leadership would rather pretend aren’t happening. Part of that ongoing campaign involved obtaining bus videos of unscrupulous behavior.
“I created [the Facebook page] almost as soon as I left,” says Norman. “People in Missoula needed to be aware of just exactly what’s happening, how this transit system works.”
But Missoula officials were less than thrilled whenever these videos surfaced on Austin’s Facebook page, in part because he was exposing their unwillingness to address the inadequacies of their mismanagement. The MUTD Board attempted to put an end to Norman’s citizen dissent of their bus system in February 2024 by attempting to universally prohibit the dissemination of videos captured by Mountain Line buses. At the 14 February 2024 MUTD Board Meeting, the policy on video evidence collected by Mountain Line buses was changed so that “All information acquired from the use of security cameras … is considered security sensitive information and is confidential.”
“And then they adopted this policy that says, ‘Nope – no more videos for anyone’,” Austin says. “And that’s what precipitated the lawsuit because that’s a ridiculous notion. I knew that could not be legally correct.”
Jordan Hess, the former placeholder Mayor who only became Mayor after a shady alleyway deal to break a City Council stalemate after John Engen died in office, is the PERFECT cog to run Mountain Line. I particularly enjoyed seeing that sphincter-clenching look on his face yesterday when he saw who was waiting to speak with him at the “open house”.
Free buses are GREAT for the “urban campers” who want to get back to their riverside trash heaps after burning calories on the bus masturbating in view of minors. One of those riverside trash heaps at Buckhouse bridge, just off highway 93, is getting cleaned up this week after TWO private land owners spent the last 7 months talking about the problem, which now looks like this:
I’ll be writing more about this situation and the factors that led to it becoming such a disgusting mess, including identifying one of the “campers” who inhabited this riverside trash heap.
For this post on media inversion, I think it’s more interesting to read how that former Democrat spokesperson, Martin Kidston, “reported” on one of the property owners, Buckhouse Shoptown LLC, as they attempt to develop land adjacent to this environmental hazmat zone, along with plans to “record an easement” to “enhance” public river access:
Missoula County commissioners last week approved a request to amend the county’s growth policy and rezone a parcel of vacant land off Highway 93 south of the city.
Buckhouse Shoptown LLC submitted the request and plans to build a dry shop and heated storage facility on a small portion of its 83-acre property. Shoptown also plans to record an easement off the highway to enhance and preserve public access to the Bitterroot River.
When I spent a thousand dollars of my own money in 2023 to remove Todd Keith Spence’s meth shack on the side of the Clark Fork, pulling 1.84 TONS of trash from going into the river, the “environment” reporter for the Missoula Current, Laura Lundquist, showed up to cover this achievement, but the story was later spiked by the former Montana Democrat spokesperson, Martin Kidston. Isn’t that interesting?
For context on how I try to make people in Missoula less ignorant, including our local reporters, here’s an email exchange I had with Laura Lundquist in 2022 to help educate her about her employer:
When I called Laura Lundquist this morning the voicemail I left included a reminder about that spiked story, along with my assertion that she’s working within a nexus of narrative control between local media, local non-profits (like the Clark Fork Coalition), and local government. No where is this more clear than the Missoulian’s obsession with bashing restaurants like Pangea and Taco Sano while completely ignoring what I had to deal with at Silk Road, owned by the son of Missoula’s beloved foodie, Ray Risho.
Before ending my employment after I complained about the hostile work environment his kitchen manager had subjected me to, Sam Risho told me directly that he considered two of my narrative control adversaries, local government/non-profit power players, Ellie Boldman and Susan Hay Patrick, to be friends of his. If I hadn’t been so desperate for the meager income part-time dishwashing afforded me, I would have left right there. Instead I’m still looking for a lawyer.
As Sam Risho does the smart thing by getting rid of me, safe from the Missoulian’s selective media attention squarely focused on Pangea’s Scott Billadeau (who made himself a local target when he publicly opposed local Covid measures in 2020 and the SAM project a few years later), I will note how ironic it was yesterday to have the SAM open house in the historic Florence building, where Abe Risho will soon be opening Sumac, and where the Missoula County Sheriff Chaplain, Lowell Hochhalter, has an office for his “non-profit”, the LifeGuard Group, which I’ve tied to the kind of “Christians” surrounding Charlie Kirk before he was assassinated.
With Sumac opening, and Silk Road getting more catering business from the increase in filming brought to them by Montana legislators, it most certainly isn’t smart business to have a citizen journalist around lamenting about that dead co-worker and being able to directly link movie/catering money to the illicit powder drug trade.
To wrap Part III up, if the paid reporters in this town would like to keep up with me, there’s an easter egg of court documents at the Buckhouse bridge “urban camp” I found in the trash, then conveniently left behind in the grocery cart closest to highway 93. Find it and you’ll know the name of the next tweaker known to the drug-trafficking Missoula County Sheriff’s Office I’ll be writing about.
For the next installment of AMERICA UPSIDE DOWN, which might have to wait until next week, I’ll show how no one escapes the effects of inversion in 2026, not even me, so stay tuned.
And, as always, thanks for reading!
