"I believe there was a different breed of editors and publishers 27 years ago when my weekly column first appeared in the Rapid City Journal. There was a “hands-off” publisher named Rusty Swan who did not interject his personal feelings or opinions to those folks laboring in the newsroom. I know because I was working in that newsroom as a reporter.

There was an editor named Jim Kuehn who took a chance when he hired me at the urging of the managing editor, Jim Carrier, who had come to the Journal from the Associated Press in Minneapolis.

It was Carrier who hired me, but it was Kuehn who stood behind me even when threats from advertisers demanded that he stop my column. I know he must have discussed this with Swan, the publisher, but I never heard a word from him asking me to change the tone of my columns.

But time marches on and other editors come and go. I immediately clashed with a new editor at the Journal named Joe Karius. A practicing Catholic, he became upset when I wrote a column about the myriad of problems we faced as students at the Holy Rosary Indian Mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation while boarders there. He accused me of being a “Catholic basher” and indicated that he would monitor my columns from then on.

To me “monitor” meant “censorship” and I told him that I was pulling my column from the Journal. And I did."

Get the Story:
Tim Giago: Killing the messenger is popular in the media (The Native American Times 4/24)

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