This report was produced in a collaboration between InvestigateWest and RANGE.
When the Spokesman-Review announced plans to transfer Spokane’s 143-year-old, family-owned newspaper to a nonprofit founded by executive editor Rob Curley, it took over the front page.
“The People’s Paper,” read the April 16, 2025, headline, saying ownership would transfer “to you, the community.”
Key to the plan was Curley, the folksy self-proclaimed “journalism nerd” who burst into Spokane a decade ago, declaring a love for Gonzaga University basketball rivaled only by his love for Disney. The transition to Comma Community Journalism Lab was cast in media industry publications not only as a way to save Spokane’s daily newspaper, but as part of a growing movement to resurrect dying papers by making them less dependent on ads and corporate ownership and more on philanthropy and community partnerships. As proof of concept, the paper had already added several so-called “community-funded” journalists to its staff.
But in the Spokesman-Review newsroom this summer, that hopeful vision ran into persistent concerns about Curley’s leadership. More than a dozen current and former employees, along with contemporaneous records reviewed by InvestigateWest and RANGE, reveal how the newsroom had raised concerns about Curley’s management for years, culminating in his suspension from the paper on Aug. 7 and a vote of no confidence from the union, the Spokane Editorial Society. He is currently on leave as the paper conducts an internal investigation.
Employees said stories that might have angered powerful community figures or potential donors were killed or curtailed, and that they felt he retaliated against workers he viewed as disloyal. Staffers questioned his financial oversight of Comma, which hired his own son at a salary topping most reporters’ and recruited out-of-town executives to serve as top editors before Comma had met its fundraising goal. Current and former Spokesman-Review employees also described workplace complaints involving Curley and one of those editors, including allegations of inappropriate lewd and sexual comments around employees, including teenage interns.
Curley declined to comment for this article. In a brief phone interview, Curley’s attorney, Patrick Kirby, who specializes in employment and wrongful termination cases, said, “It’s all inaccurate,” in reference to a list of claims InvestigateWest and RANGE provided to Curley prior to publication. Kirby hung up the call when a reporter pressed him on which claims specifically he believed were inaccurate.
