Former NPR news boss Michael Oreskes, who was ousted from his position after allegations of sexual harassment, has been tapped to help create a new online news site. | Anja Niedringhaus/AP Photo Media Ousted NPR news chief, ex-Fox News execs team up on new site The site's founder says it will remedy the media's trust problems, but two top hires left their previous jobs after allegations of harassment and racism.

One was ousted from NPR amid allegations of sexual harassment. The other left Fox News shortly after writing a column widely panned as racist and anti-gay. Now they’ve been recruited to help launch a digital news startup with the stated goal of restoring faith in media.

Another former Fox News executive, Ken LaCorte, has enlisted former NPR news boss Michael Oreskes and former Fox News executive editor John Moody to join him in creating LaCorte News, which he said will be a truly “fair and balanced” alternative in these polarized times.


The site, expected to soft launch before the end of January, will feature a curated feed of aggregated news alongside some original content. Placement of each story will be partially determined by an “importance score” assigned by editors, to avoid the type of algorithm-driven partisan news silos that have formed on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

LaCorte said that by recruiting from both NPR and Fox News, he has a built-in buffer against the trust problems that have plagued media in the era of President Donald Trump. “Anybody gets to pull the stop switch and say, 'Hold on here, let’s see what we’re doing, let’s go back and talk about this,'” Moody said in an interview.

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There will surely be questions, though, about the site’s ability to cover some of the biggest stories in the country, including the #MeToo movement and issues around race and sexuality. LaCorte said he’s not worried about Oreskes or Moody’s histories, arguing that some men have been dispatched from their jobs too quickly and easily in the #MeToo era.

“I’m proud that I pulled in both the former head of news at Fox News and the former head of news at NPR,” said LaCorte, who left Fox News at the end of 2016. “I’m not going to be egotistical enough to say I'm going to save journalism, but I'm f---ing trying.”

He added, “I couldn’t have afforded either one of these guys had we not been in this crazy type of atmosphere. … In a weird way, I’m actually a beneficiary of companies being hypersensitive.”

His view of the #MeToo movement is sure to draw objections. Jennifer Drobac, a professor at the McKinney School of Law at Indiana University and an expert on sexual harassment, said: “Women and minorities have been oppressed for so long that to say that this has gone too fast is not just laughable but insulting and demeaning.”

It's too soon to tell how LaCorte News — which LaCorte said he’s launching with about $1 million, much of it his own money — will fare in a difficult business environment for media startups. LaCorte says he plans to rely largely on advertising revenue. But advertisers have been sensitive about being paired with controversial content and news sources. And the launch comes amid a reckoning in media, with men such as late Fox News head Roger Ailes and ex-CBS chief Leslie Moonves losing their jobs over allegations they harassed and assaulted women. Reports of potential comebacks by other media figures, such as former CBS anchor Charlie Rose, have largely been met with scorn.

Oreskes declined to agree to an interview for this story. When he left NPR in November 2017 amid allegations of inappropriate advances and sexual comments over decades, he said in a statement that his behavior was “wrong and inexcusable.” LaCorte said he did not think the allegations — which included an NPR employee reporting as recently as 2016 that Oreskes invited her to his beach cottage for career counseling — were substantial.

Moody declined to discuss the February column in which he said the U.S. Olympic team should take as its motto “darker, gayer, different.” Fox pulled the column after its initial posting, but LaCorte said the piece was meant to be sarcastic.

Drobac said she had serious questions about how an outlet with someone accused of sexual harassment in an important role will present news.

“Will this person deliver the news fairly? Will he be able to work with others fairly and competently?” she asked.

Some plans for the site have been public for months, but Oreskes’ role was not previously known. LaCorte will be the site’s CEO, and Moody will serve as editor in chief. Oreskes doesn’t have a formal title, but LaCorte described him as sitting on the site’s editorial board and said he’d been joining regular phone calls for about six months, with compensation in stock. LaCorte said the site now has five or six full-time employees, one of whom is a woman.

LaCorte News will feature feeds that look similar to those on Facebook, with users able to adjust the mix of news they receive — but stories judged to be important by editors will always receive priority, LaCorte said. He expects 30 to 60 pieces of original content per month — mostly written, but with some video — alongside a “backbone” of aggregated material and a heavily moderated comments section.

Editorial meetings will be live-streamed as part of an effort to rehabilitate the image of media by demystifying the news-making process, he said. LaCorte sees his venture as simultaneously addressing media bias as well as the ills wrought by social media.

“I think there is a tremendous market out there for transparent news,” he said.

Both Moody and Oreskes will work remotely from New York, with the LaCorte News offices based outside San Francisco.

The site is launching at a time when most newsrooms are seeking diversity along all sort of lines: ideological, racial, gender and more. LaCorte said he was not concerned that the backgrounds of his leadership team would keep him from hiring women or otherwise diversifying his staff. He said he’d read everything reported about Oreskes, who he met through Moody, and talked with him before bringing him onto the team. He said he did not feel it necessary to look further into the allegations against him.

“I think that Mike Oreskes is a good man and a great journalist,” LaCorte said. “I am more troubled by this kind of new McCarthyistic era where people are blown out of careers for relatively minor things that might have happened decades ago or being sarcastic in an op-ed. I kind of anticipated that by bringing him aboard, some people might find that to be a good reason to dislike my product, this news service, before it started, but it just seemed like the right thing.”

Drobac said she was not opposed to hiring people accused of wrongdoing who have demonstrated the ability to change but that they need to be vetted carefully. She added that employers should be deliberate with how they are reintegrated into the workplace: “The question,” she said, “is, how is the company going to monitor this guy?”

LaCorte said he is not worried about any problems with Oreskes. “That’s not a concern,” he said. “If somebody is bothered because decades ago, a guy gave unwanted passes to people, I’m not sure what I would do.”

