John Adams

Fast forward a few years, there was a series of trials that aimed to bring some of these elected officials to account for this illegal coordination.

And during that period of time, I had also been laid off at the Great Falls Tribune.

And so I'd followed this story as a political reporter for one of the state's largest dailies.

And then I found myself without a job in the middle of the 2015 legislative session.

And that was what sort of gave birth to the idea of Montana Free Press because I looked around the state at, you know, where could I continue to do this kind of brand of journalism?

And I didn't really see any viable options.

I saw a continued decline of the print newspapers that were still active in the state.

Well, at the time, you know, by the time I left, it was I know there was, you know, a handful of TV reporters that would kind of cycle through.

Usually they weren't there for more than just a session or two.

And then Montana is a very small media market.

So any of the good TV reporters, media, as soon as their contract was up, went to a bigger market.

So you didn't have a lot of except for our friend Maritza.

Except for our friend Maritza.

Exactly.

She's one of the exceptions for sure.

So, you know, there was two sort of legendary longtime state house reporters, Chuck Johnson and Mike Dennison, who were anchored to the Lee Newspapers Bureau.

And those were the guys who I really kind of looked at as my competition.

Chuck had been doing it for that point, you know, probably close to 40 years.

I had followed in Mike and Chuck's footsteps in both the Great Falls Tribune and then they went on to the Lee Bureau.

And