Morning News Still Absent on Story (Outtakes Opinion)

We were impressed to see on Feb. 19 that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette took notice of an Associated Press story about a Rogers man whose questionable penny stock exploits have been detailed at length in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. Jim Bolt, the former chief operating officer of now delisted Golf Entertainment Inc., made news in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

Bolt was cited for contempt of court on Feb. 18 by Oklahoma District Judge Steven Taylor. Bolt didn’t show up on that date to continue testifying at a pretrial hearing for Terry Nichols, an accused co-conspirator in the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Bolt left the stand more than a week earlier complaining of chest pains, an apparently recurring malady that has delayed a litany of legal proceedings mostly initiated by Bolt over the years. He is the former managing editor of Rogers’ Arkansas Chronicle, a publication that he claims, like Golf, is now based in Washington, D.C.

John Culbertson, a former Chronicle employee, is said to have a photograph of the Murrah building taken at the moment it was destroyed. According to news reports, Bolt gave conflicting testimony on whether or not such a photo exists but said that if it did, the Chronicle would retain the picture’s copyright.

The Feb. 19 report omitted information about Bolt’s relationship to Golf, the company’s 2001 run-in with the Arkansas Securities Department and federal court records that detail an improper relationship between Golf executives and some major shareholders. But it was more than The Morning News did.

The Springdale daily, predictably, published no report on Feb. 19 about Bolt’s contempt citation. Since the Business Journal first began a series of lengthy articles about Golf Entertainment in August 2001, the Morning News has paid more attention to litigation filed by Bolt, et al., in response to the Business Journal’s reporting than to the mountain of public records and first-hand interviews that are readily available regarding Golf’s questionable activities.

The Morning News, incidentally, is owned by a parent company that’s held by Stephens Inc., a Little Rock securities firm.

When Golf’s leaders sued the Business Journal for libel, the Morning News played up the story in heavy headline type. When the suit was dropped by one plaintiff and stayed for Bolt by virtue of his recent filing for bankruptcy, the story was buried in the Springdale newspaper.

The Morning News has ignored this story in its hometown because it doesn’t understand the subject matter, it is intimidated by the principals’ litigious histories, or it has simply been beaten senseless on the coverage.

We assume it’s a combination of all three.