Maribel Perez Wadsworth — president of Gannett news and publisher of USA TODAY — is a liar

What does it say about the country's largest newspaper chain when its senior news executive chooses not to tell readers the truth?

An avalanche of emails from readers who are upset that Gannett killed my old website seems to have taken its toll on the recipient, Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of Gannett’s news division and the publisher of USA TODAY.

She sent a response to one reader who contacted her on LinkedIn. It’s chock-full of lies, half-truths and typical mainstream media spin.

"Hi Edward, Thank you for reaching out. I think there is a clear misunderstanding that I have spent a fair amount of today trying to research. As I have learned, The Gun Writer is a column and blog site formerly published by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The Herald-Tribune has recently migrated to a new digital platform and as part of that transition, a handful of out-of-date sites or those with little audience, were not migrated to the new platform. No content has been destroyed. All of that work was created by Herald-Tribune staff and is owned by the Herald-Tribune and the Herald-Tribune continuers to have access to it in its archives. The decision on what content to migrate to the new platform was based on the reasons above and was made by local staff. I know this because I asked about it today, when I first learned of this in an email I received from a reader this morning. I hope this clears it up for you. Please do let me know if you have any further questions. Many thanks again for reaching out. All best, Maribel"

First, thegunwriter.com was a standalone website. It wasn’t part of the Herald-Tribune, and it didn’t need to migrate “to a new digital platform.” It was fine where it was, not affiliated with the newspaper. It was taken down out of spite.

Since it was killed, all the content is gone, and it is certainly not available in the Herald-Tribune archives.

Try finding it yourself.

Go to the newspaper’s archives and enter “Gamut Resolutions,” or “Aegis Tactical” or “Manatee Gun and Archery Club” or the name of anyone I used to write about in the search field.

You’ll get this response: “Your search returned no results. Please try a different word or phrase.”

I really wish I was wrong about this, but as a standalone site, TGW had its own archives, and now that it’s gone, eight years of stories, photos, videos and other content are lost.

As to Maribel’s assertion that TGW was produced by Herald-Tribune staff and owned by the paper, that too is a boldfaced lie.

I owned the site and I worked it myself. Very rarely I’d get a photographer to help, which was always very appreciated.

As for TGW being “out-of-date” or a site with “little audience,” Maribel saw to that personally in August, when she banned me from posting on the site or its social media. After that, of course the traffic went down.

The one thing Maribel got right in her response is that there most certainly is a misunderstanding:

She didn’t understand that you can’t smooth over or try to hide a poor decision with lies, especially when they’re so easy to disprove.

She didn’t understand that the gun community is smarter, more insightful and has better BS detectors than other readers.

And she didn’t understand that there are some folks who value truth more than anything else.

In my humble opinion, Maribel has spent too much time locked in her ivory tower, and the rarified air seems to have taken a toll on her ability to tell the difference between truth and lies.

Sad, that.

She’s got 5,000 journalists working for her. If one of them lied to their readers like she did, she’d fire them.

As always, thanks for your time.

Lee