How ‘made-up’ stories about mayor proved costly for 139-year-old US newspaper

A 139-year-old Massachusetts newspaper, the Everett Leader Herald, will publish its final edition this week after reaching a $1.1 million settlement in a defamation case filed by Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria, The Independent has reported.

The settlement, announced Monday, resolves a lawsuit that accused the publication of fabricating quotes and publishing false articles with the intent of smearing the mayor’s reputation.

DeMaria, filed the defamation suit in 2021, reacted to the settlement with relief, saying that the actions of the Leader Herald’s publisher Joshua Resnek and owner Mathew Philbin were not only dishonest but corrupt.

“What the Everett Leader Herald, its owner, and its publisher and editor did to my family and me — publishing article after article, accusation after accusation about me that they knew were false, that they knew they had no basis for, for the avowed purpose of destroying my reputation to serve their own personal financial interest — wasn’t just dishonest. It was corrupt,” DeMaria said at a press conference.

The case centered around a series of articles published by the paper, accusing DeMaria of bribery and extortion. The publication als called him “Kickback Carlo.”

In court filings, Resnek admitted to deliberately fabricating quotes in an effort to harm DeMaria ahead of the 2021 mayoral election. Resnek acknowledged his motivation was to “drop bombs” on the mayor in a bid to influence the election. According to Boston.com, Resnek wrote in an email, “Each week, 52 times a year, I invent the Leader Herald … The mayor is my enemy … It takes me two days away from important writing every week to create this s***.”

The settlement marks the end of a long history for the Leader Herald, which began publishing in 1885. The closure leaves the city with just two local newspapers, raising concerns among residents about media bias. “It will be very hard to find either local paper writing anything that isn’t pro-mayor or pro-administration,” said Everett resident Paula Sterite.

Legal experts described the case as a textbook example of defamation, citing the “actual malice” standard for proving deliberate falsehoods that harm a person’s reputation. Northeastern journalism professor Dan Kennedy noted, “You will not find a clearer example of actual malice.”

Jeffrey Robbins, DeMaria’s attorney, warned that such fabrications contribute to the public’s declining trust in journalism. “This is the kind of set of facts which really does damage to journalists who work their tails off to do the right thing,” Robbins said.