A small Bible college in California has found itself at the center of a controversy, with possible criminal implications, involving Newsweek and the magazine’s parent company.
The relationship between Olivet University and the Newsweek Media Group is under scrutiny by the Manhattan district attorney’s office over free advertising — worth an estimated $149,000 — that the university was able to get placed in the magazine, Newsweek reported.
In 2016, according to a report published on Tuesday night by the magazine, the university was in the process of building a satellite campus in upstate New York, and offered county officials a deal: free advertising in Newsweek. The officials accepted, and the magazine published 10 full-page ads over the next three months.
Johnathan Davis, a co-founder of IBT Media, Newsweek’s parent company, is married to Tracy Davis, the president of Olivet, which was founded in 2004.
In an interview with the magazine, Johnathan Davis said he was not involved in the ad deal. However, he added, it was a “public good.”
“Helping each other,” he told Newsweek, “is not a crime.”
The institution sought to distance itself from the district attorney’s investigation in January. “Recent media reports which link Olivet University to government probes, and or Newsweek/IBT Media, are inaccurate,” said Ronn Torossian, a university spokesman, in a written statement at the time.
“There are no shared ownership interests,” Torossian said. “The only financial ties between the school and Newsweek/IBT Media has been payment for a licensing and R&D arrangement,” he said at the time.
Deeper Ties?
But Tuesday’s report indicates that the financial ties may have been deeper than the licensing and research-and-development arrangement. (A lengthy editor’s note appended to the top of the Newsweek report noted an attempt by management to intervene in its publication. Ultimately, however, the article was published “free of interference.”)
In an interview last Friday with the editorial staff of the Newsweek Media Group, which was published early Wednesday, after the Newsweek report, by the International Business Times, Johnathan and Tracy Davis, alongside Dev Pragad, chief executive of the Newsweek Media Group, discussed the relationship between the university and the company. The headline of that article is: “Newsweek Media Group Will Work More Closely With Christian University, Founder Says.”
“We explored some products together, and the product of that exploration was basically R&D and licensing,” Johnathan Davis said in that article.
Pragad later clarified the remark. “Since 2006, the university developed various versions of digital publishing platform which IBT used to build and scale its digital media business,” he said in a written statement. “The university shared its proprietary technology solutions to assist in building out these platforms through multiple phases of research and development.”
When pressed on why the company had decided to team up with the relatively young Olivet University for research and development, as opposed to another institution, the leaders said it was due to the college’s resources and expertise.
Johnathan and Tracy Davis reiterated their assertion that reports tying the university to government investigations were “inaccurate.”
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Chronicle.
Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.
