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Aspen’s Tangled Summer Saga: The Rich Developer vs. the Local Paper

Aspen, Colorado — Summer in Aspen is typically a breezy, idyllic season of sunny hikes and ice cream socials, with wealthy tourists attending jazz festivals and enjoying mountain views from their $1,000-a-night hotel rooms. It’s the season to dive in to enjoy.

But recently, the intertwined tale of wealth and press freedom has become an Aspen summer obsession. It erupted after the newspaper sued him for defamation, slandering him and falsely referring to him as a Russian oligarch.

A lawsuit by a powerhouse suburban developer could have been big news for the 140-year-old Aspen Times. The newspaper is a beloved institution that has chronicled scandals and controversies since Aspen’s silver-mining days transformed into the golden skiing and cultural Mecca of the Rockies.

But according to a former staffer, the owner of the West Virginia-based newspaper chain did not allow the Aspen Times to write about the defamation lawsuit, and other articles about developer Vladislav Doronin. It has been blocked from being published. The lawsuit was settled in May.

Aspen Times publishers and company leaders say they do not censor their reporting. However, the episode demoralized the newsroom and brought criticism to Aspen that the newspaper’s owner had given in to the developer. One editor quit. Another editor was fired after publishing an opinion column about what happened.

In Aspen, the controversy has pushed local journalism out, where the average home costs about $3 million, small shops, Gucci and Dior, and local workers.

Longtime columnist Roger Marolt, who left the Aspen Times, said, “Losing it feels like we have nothing left.

On Wednesday, the Aspen Times responded to the criticism, saying, quite late It delved into the finances of the developer who sued the paper. Based on public records and court documents, the article calls into question the developer’s statement that it ceased operations in Russia in 2014.

It all started in early March, when a veteran Aspen Times reporter was checking county real estate applications regularly when he came across a blockbuster. Go through his Miami-based company, the OKO Group.

Even in towns with dizzying real estate values, people were stunned by the prices. Doronin paid $76 million, according to property records. That’s more than seven times the $10 million it sold less than a year ago when a group of local developers bought the property from Aspen Ski Company.

The facility is part of an ambitious effort to build a new luxury hotel and lodge, a ski lift and a ski museum, voters narrowly approved after a divided referendum.

The local developer team featured Jeff Gorsuch, cousin of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, as the public face. The team spent years planning, researching, and going door-to-door to gain voter support. Aspen residents and leaders said they were shocked to read local papers sold by the developer.

Gorsuch said in an interview that the sale was a business decision. “That’s how the world works,” he said, adding that he has high hopes for the future of real estate.

Soon, residents around Aspen began asking about the deal and the new owner, Mr. Doronin.

According to court documents, Doronin was born in then Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and renounced his Soviet citizenship after leaving the USSR in 1985. his lawyer says.

Doronin founded a real estate development company in Russia in 1993 and built dozens of residential, retail and office buildings in Moscow, according to court records. In a defamation complaint against the Aspen Times, Doronin’s lawyers said Doronin made money legally without bribery or corruption and had no connection with President Vladimir V. Putin.

After Russia’s aggression, Doronin issued a statement on LinkedIn, saying he “condemns the Russian aggression against Ukraine and fervently wishes for peace.”

In an email, Doronin said Aspen’s “special energy” attracted him to seek investment and development opportunities after years of visiting skiing and attending summer cultural events. . He said he plans to build a hotel on the site and will travel to Aspen to meet with local officials and others.

He said he sued the paper in April “to address factual inaccuracies that had a negative impact”.

In his defamation complaint, Doronin accused the newspaper of stirring up anti-Russian sentiment and launching a “misplaced Russophobic attack” against him. He objected to an article calling him an “oligarch” and a letter to the editor suggesting he was laundering money through his Aspen estate.

Aspen Times reporter Rick Carroll, who discovered Doronin’s land purchase, was also one of the first to notice the defamation lawsuit in public records. According to a former staff member, he found it even before it was served to the paper’s owner.

It was another big scoop, but the Aspen Times was in the uncomfortable center.

Aspen Times is one of the acquired resort town newspapers. December of last year Ogden Newspapers is a family owned company with over 50 newspapers nationwide. CEO Bob Nutting also owns the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Officials at Ogden Newspapers have decided not to cover the lawsuit while the parties seek a settlement. Ogden also declined to publish a news story and two opinion columns about Doronin, according to two former editors.

Eventually, the Aspen Daily News broke the news that a competitor had been sued. The Aspen Times didn’t take a public peek until the lawsuit was settled in May.

Under the settlement agreement, the newspaper added what Ogden officials described as “minor edits” to two articles. I have agreed to delete the letter to the editor and make a good faith effort to seek comments from Mr. Doronin on future articles.

One of the headlines went from “Oligarch or not, new Aspen investor has ties to Russia” to “Aspen’s new investor has ties to luxury hoteliersAn editor’s note about the article said it did not meet the paper’s standards for “accuracy, impartiality and objectivity.”

The Aspen-based publisher of the paper, Alison Pattillo, disputed criticism that the paper was silenced.

The Aspen Times did not cover the lawsuit against her, but she said there was no restriction on further coverage of Mr Doronin or the land deal. ” he said.

“The idea that we were bullied by Doronin or that he has any opinion in our newsroom is ridiculous,” Patillo said in an email. “We have never acted, and will not, to cover up the truth.”

After Doronin filed a lawsuit, the newspaper’s administrators withdrew any mention of him, some former staff members said. When former editor David Krause emailed management in April to discuss an article that delved into Doronin’s business relationship, an Ogden newspaper executive said, “We are not reporting on these issues at this time. No,” he replied.

The aftermath led to a newsroom leak and undermined public confidence in the paper, according to interviews with more than a dozen local journalists, officials and Aspen residents. The Aspen Institute, a nonprofit that hosts an annual festival of ideas each summer, said it has “paused” advertising in the Aspen Times for now.

“People lost their trust,” said 72-year-old Marie Kelly. She walks daily to pick up a copy from her studio rental in an old ski chalet. “They didn’t copy Aspen’s attitude, which is good or bad, and we’re going to let it out.”

Mr. Krause I quit my job As editor of the paper in May, citing health fears and conflicts with the paper’s ownership.

His replacement, respected local journalist Andrew Travers, made restoring public confidence a top priority. To that end, he decided to run two of his columns that went private after the lawsuit was filed, as well as a series of internal emails showing the commotion in the paper.

Travers said he discussed plans with publisher Patillo before publishing the work in June. But hours after they were published, he was called to a meeting and dismissed by Ogden officials, he said. He felt blindsided, he said.

“I worked on this system to do the right thing for the newspaper and the public interest,” he said. “We were going to take this into account. It was going to be a black eye, but we were going to move forward. Clearly, I was wrong.”

Officials at Ogden Newspapers declined to discuss Travers’s dismissal, citing it as an internal human resources issue.

Shaken by the turmoil, Pitkin County officials recently voted to designate Aspen’s newer, locally-owned newspaper, the Aspen Daily News, as the official “paper of record” that publishes all legal notices in the county. . A few other advertisers have pulled out.

In June, 18 current and former elected representatives signed an open letter vowing to lose faith in the Ogden Newspapers’ leadership and to boycott the paper or refuse to speak to reporters at the Aspen Times. The letter brought a counter-argument of its own, with publisher Mr. Patillo calling it “actual censorship.”

Today the paper is reduced to just one reporter. Dismissed editor Mr. Travers is looking for another job where he can support his young family.

The Aspen Times published its latest editorial column this week. “Arise from the ashesTwo days later, we published an article examining Doronin’s financial situation. Byline was reporter Rick Carroll, who broke the article in the first place.

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