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New York Observer revises Trump coverage guidelines after editor's AIPAC flap

The New York Observer will now cover Donald Trump the same way it covers any other candidate, senior politics editor Jill Jorgensen announced today in a statement.

“In the interest of covering the race as fairly as possible despite the unavoidable conflict of interest created by our ownership—a conflict we disclose on each story about Mr. Trump—and in response to concerns raised by staffers at the paper, Observer writers will now be able to cover Mr. Trump in the same way they cover every other candidate in the presidential race,” Jorgensen said in the statement, which was first reported by The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone.

Jorgensen also said that Observer editorial staff — including editor in chief Ken Kurson — will no longer be allowed to provide any input into Trump’s campaign.

Jorgensen’s statement follows a meeting of editorial staffers with Kurson earlier today about the paper’s relationship with Trump, who is the father-in-law of Observer owner Jared Kushner. Kushner has appeared on stage with Trump and took credit for writing Trump’s March 21 speech to AIPAC.

On Sunday, New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that Kurson, a former speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani, had helped Kushner write Trump’s AIPAC speech.

Kurson defended his decision to assist with Trump’s speech in an a defiant interview with The Huffington Post.

“A week ago, a friend who’s working for Ted Cruz asked me for Ray Kelly’s phone number and I gave it to him. Until recently I was dating a Democrat operative who works for high-profile candidates. It’s a complicated world and I don’t intend to let the eleven people who have appointed themselves the journalist police tell me, at age 47, how to behave or to whom I’m allowed to speak,” he said.

Read Jorgensen’s full statement below:

"A recent report about Observer Editor Ken Kurson's input on a speech delivered by Donald Trump before AIPAC has resulted in new scrutiny of our newspaper's relationship with Mr. Trump, who is the father-in-law of our publisher, Jared Kushner. Going forward, there will be no input whatsoever on the campaign from Mr. Kurson or anyone on the editorial side of the Observer.

Further, we are re-visiting our policy on covering Mr. Trump's presidential campaign—something that has been a matter of frequent discussion and debate at the Observer since Mr. Trump announced his candidacy. The policy has evolved from our original plans to simply not cover Mr. Trump to covering him when he intersected with New York politics to more recently covering his campaign with mainly straight news stories, with an effort to avoid the opinion and analysis pieces of which other candidates have been the subject.

That policy has become less tenable as the field of candidates has shrunk. In the interest of covering the race as fairly as possible despite the unavoidable conflict of interest created by our ownership—a conflict we disclose on each story about Mr. Trump—and in response to concerns raised by staffers at the paper, Observer writers will now be able to cover Mr. Trump in the same way they cover every other candidate in the presidential race."

