Niagara Falls Reporter


The Niagara Reporter is a weekly newspaper hosted in Niagara Falls, New York. It was founded on June 28, 2000 by journalist Mike Hudson. The newspaper is currently owned by Frank R. Parlato, Jr., who additionally serves as one of the newspaper's contributors, and run by Nicholas D. D'angelo, Esq., as Managing Editor. The paper has been called "hard hitting," whose investigative stories focus on public corruption, politics, and local news.
The Niagara Reporter has also begun accepting classified ads and serves as one of the largest news publications in Niagara County.

History

The Niagara Falls Reporter was launched on June 28, 2000, by veteran journalist Mike Hudson, who had previously worked for newspapers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York City. Hudson had also previously been a reporter for the Niagara Gazette and was the lead singer of Cleveland punk band The Pagans. He died on October 27, 2017.
Since its launch, the paper's reporting on a wide variety of topics has been cited or linked to by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, along with magazines like Editor & Publisher and web outlets including Salon.
The Reporter played a central role in the Laborers Local 91 story, in which the entire leadership of the Niagara Falls union pleaded or were found guilty on numerous federal charges of extortion and racketeering. The case resulted in Hudson being the only journalist subpoenaed to testify in the trials. The paper also uncovered evidence that began a federal investigation and subsequent indictment of former Niagara Falls Mayor Vince Anello on charges of public corruption.
The Reporter published a series of articles from late 2008 through 2010 on the twin leases that the Maid of the Mist boat tour company had with the Niagara Parks Commission in both Ontario and New York. The Reporter was the first paper to publish the terms of the leases and to report that the NPC secretly reduced the rent while excluding other bidders. In late 2009, the minister of tourism for the province of Ontario ordered the Maid of the Mist's lease to be offered to external bidders for the first time in the history of Niagara Parks.
In 2011, the city council of Niagara Falls voted to endorse the Niagara Falls Reporter as the council's weekly newspaper for publishing its public announcements as well as any other matters the council wishes to be printed or published.