Co-Owner of Kansas Newspaper Dies Day After Police Raid

The day after police raided the office of the Kansas newspaper she co-owned, along with her own home, Joan Meyer collapsed and died. Meyer co-owned the Marion County Record with her son Eric Meyer, the paper's publisher, and along with the newspaper office, police also descended on their home Friday. According to the Record, Joan Meyer, who was 98 and "otherwise in good health for her age," watched in tears as police seized her computer as well as a router used by her Alexa smart speaker (leaving her unable to use it for assistance, the paper notes), left a mess of cords tangled on the floor, and pawed through her son's papers. She wasn't able to eat or sleep after that, the paper says, and on Saturday, she collapsed at her home and died. The paper says the raids contributed to Meyer's death, leaving her "stressed beyond her limits."

• "Died in the line of duty": In an opinion piece at the Kansas City Star, Melinda Henneberger agrees with the Record's assessment, writing of Meyer, a journalist since 1953, "It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people's right to know appears to have killed her." Henneberger says that one of the last comments Meyer made was to tell a colleague of the police raid, "These are Hitler tactics."

• News organizations condemn raid: Thirty-four media outlets, including the AP, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, signed a four-page letter to Marion's police chief condemning the raid and calling on the department to immediately return all the materials that were seized, CNN reports. "There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search ... and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches," the letter reads.
• Business owner's involvement: The raid appears to be connected to local businesswoman Kari Newell. The Record received a tip that Newell had her driver's license suspended after a DUI and yet continued to drive without a license; ultimately, suspecting the information had been leaked "as part of legal sparring" between Newell and her estranged husband amid divorce proceedings, the newspaper decided against publishing a story about it. (It did, however, publish a story about Newell kicking its reporters out of a congressman's open forum and a follow-up story about Newell herself, at a city council meeting, falsely accusing the paper of having illegally obtained the DUI info about her; that story goes into great detail about the timeline of the paper's involvement with Newell.)

• Business owner's statement: Newell released a lengthy statement on Facebook denying any involvement in the police raid. "It's truly beyond me how people think I alone am capable of having a newspaper raided. Even in small town America we have the same processes any larger city does to make this happen," she writes, going on to allege that identity theft was involved in gaining information about her.
• As for those allegations: The newspaper denies Newell's allegations, and explains that a reporter legally used her own personal information to obtain the same information that had been received in the tip, which was available publicly—and that, after deciding not to publish a story about the matter, the paper instead notified local police about the allegations that Newell drove without a license. Local police then alerted Newell to what was going on, and the raid followed.
• Police respond: According to the Kansas Reflector, the Marion Police Department posted its own statement to Facebook Saturday claiming that while federal law protects journalists from searches and seizures, that law doesn't apply if reporters are suspected of a crime (in this case, apparently, the supposed identity theft Newell alleges took place). "I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated," the statement reads.

(More Kansas stories.)