The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.There are few things our team here at Montana Free Press find more rewarding, and more valuable, than reader feedback. It’s one way we know our work has hit a mark that provides the public with impactful information.We got an earful in the wake of our co-publication last weekend of ProPublica’s blockbuster investigation of high-profile oncologist Dr. Thomas Weiner, formerly of St. Peter’s Health in Helena. About 80% of that feedback was positive, expressing admiration and gratitude for the herculean depth and thoroughness of J. David McSwane’s reporting, which provided well-contextualized answers to questions that have simmered since Weiner was fired by the hospital in 2020. But a meaningful 20% or so had different reactions to the story and MTFP’s decision to publish it. The large majority of these readers couched their objections in terms of balance. They felt the article didn’t give a fair accounting of the herculean amount of good that Weiner provided in his decades of caring for Montana cancer patients. Many of these readers shared personal stories of their relationships with Weiner — relationships they credited, in many cases, with saving their lives or the lives of their loved ones.We have deep respect for those stories, as well as for the loyalty and gratitude that many of Dr. Weiner’s patients feel toward him. But McSwane’s piece was not written and should not be read as a referendum on the entirety of Weiner’s career. Rather, the story examined and documented the allegations, practices and legal actions that led to his abrupt dismissal from St. Peter’s after a 24-year career and a $10.8 million settlement between the hospital and the federal government over his work. Weiner’s case involved serious and well-documented allegations of patient harm and fraudulent billing patterns — allegations with profound legal, medical and community repercussions. Those issues go beyond individual experiences and raise important questions about health care oversight, institutional responsibility, and patient safety.Among our core missions here at MTFP is to hold power to account by ensuring the public has a chance to know what is going on in Montana’s vital institutions, ranging from the state Legislature to regional hospitals where life and death decisions are made on a daily basis. That’s especially important when news that deserves public airing is painful, as it is here.It was those values that guided our decision to partner with ProPublica to publish this story. And those values that will continue to guide the reporting we pursue, produce, and publish in hopes of providing Montanans with news, however uncomfortable, that matters.—Brad TyerViewshed 📸Maggie McGuane of Livingston has become the unofficial point person for an effort to stop a high-density resort development that a Miami-based developer outlined in emails to the Park County Planning Department earlier this year. McGuane, photographed near her home on Oct. 23, 2024, told MTFP that the development proposed for Suce Creek, one of Paradise Valley’s northernmost drainages, has convinced many of the area’s residents that guardrails should be put around development in the valley. “It’s amazing to see everyone in agreement — and this is Park County-wide. I have grown up around these things being huge battles,” McGuane said. “This is my first experience with a proposal that, across the board, everyone thinks this is a bad idea.”Read More: Unpacking a ‘uniquely mysterious’ development proposal in Paradise Valley.—Amanda EggertThe Gist 📌Montana’s Board of Public Education this week dove headlong into its second round of applications from school districts interested in opening new public charter schools. The motivations behind the proposals varied considerably, from enhancing trades-based education to addressing logistical challenges with public schooling on Hutterite colonies. In several cases, though, the pitches from local school leaders are responding to growing homeschool enrollment.During the fall of 2020, homeschool enrollment skyrocketed in Montana as families and school officials wrestled with the dilemma of how to safely return to in-person instruction following the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office of Public Instruction later reported that there were 9,868 homeschool students statewide that school year, a nearly 70% increase over 2019-20. While some students returned to public classrooms as the pandemic’s immediate impacts began to ease in fall 2021, homeschooling never returned to pre-pandemic levels and, over the past two years, has shown signs of gradual growth.Half of the 12 public charter school applications now under consideration by the Board of Public Education specifically cite homeschool students as one of the demographics they’re anticipating tapping into. Additionally, several administrators from the public districts pitching those applications told board members Wednesday that the virtual instruction, career exploration and trades-based education they’re proposing could be attractive features for homeschool families in their communities.Florence-Carlton Schools Superintendent Todd Fiske said his Bitterroot Valley district recognizes that some students may do better with virtual instruction or benefit from a “buffet-style” mix of in-person and remote learning, which is what his district’s proposed SOAR Academy aims to deliver. Fiske added that the district is already preparing to launch a state-approved digital learning platform that can help students access public education resources from home.“It’ll give our principals an opportunity to start working towards bringing back or reengaging some of the homeschool students that are really pretty excited about learning what that platform can do to help support them and their families at home,” Fiske said.In addition to allowing the creation of public charter schools, the 2023 Legislature passed House Bill 396, which allows families to enroll homeschool students in the public school system on a part-time basis and lets districts secure corresponding state funding.The board of public education will vote on whether to approve or deny the latest batch of public charter school applications on Jan. 24, 2025.READ MORE: Board of Public Education fields applications for 12 more public charter schools.—Alex SakariassenLooking ahead 👀With the 2025 Legislature just around the corner, advocates of systemic reform for Montana’s mental health and developmental disability services are tracking several key proposals that could become law.The list of ideas comes from the state’s Behavioral Health System for Future Generations Commission, which was set up in 2023 by Republican legislative leaders and the administration of Gov. Greg Gianforte. The group has spent more than a year considering changes to state health care and human services programs — many of which are plagued by underfunding, inefficiencies and backlogs — meant to serve some of Montana’s most vulnerable residents.  About half of the commission’s formal proposals have been included in Gianforte’s new two-year budget proposal, the state health department said at an early December commission meeting.Those include:Redesigning the state’s primary Medicaid program for funding developmental disabilities services. The change would make reimbursement rates paid to providers based on “acuity,” or the urgency and intensity of a person’s needs Re-opening special clinics for evaluating and diagnosing children’s developmental needs, many of which closed as a result of 2017 state budget cuts Creating an electronic registry for tracking where the state has available mental health beds Improving case management options for high-needs patients Developing a transition program for people who are returning to their communities after being discharged from institutions like the state psychiatric hospital Ideas that did not get the nod in the governor’s budget proposal? Enhancements for mobile crisis teams, family peer support programs, tenancy resources for homeless and at-risk people, and transportation assistance for people traveling for services in rural communities. Those proposals could be funded next year — though only if they’re championed by lawmakers who try to advance them without the advance blessing of the Gianforte administration.All told, the state health department said the 10 recommendations included in the governor’s budget would receive $100 million of funding, from both state and federal sources, over the upcoming biennium. Of course, a lot can happen — and not happen — over the 90-day legislative session. All of these proposals will be subject to scrutiny by legislators tasked with reviewing the state health department’s sprawling budget. We’ll be keeping an eye on what happens next.—Mara SilversGlad You Asked 🙋🏻Earlier this month we saw a reader turn to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, curious about grant-funded reporting projects in Montana media. They’d noticed the following acknowledgment on reporter Rob Chaney’s October series about the energy future of Montana’s coal country: This three-month investigation was supported by a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting grant funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute. They had some fair questions about the practice, among them how MTFP and other news outlets choose, accept and manage grant money from organizations that sometimes have non-journalistic agendas without compromising our journalistic ethics. We’d like to share the answers. I can only speak for Montana Free Press, of course, but I can think of fewer than half a dozen specific reporting projects among the thousands of stories we’ve published in the last five years that were in part supported by grants. In 2021-2022, for instance, a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network helped fund Emily Stifler Wolfe’s series on regenerative agriculture in Montana. The money mostly went to cover travel expenses, freelancer fees and the cost of hiring a dedicated photographer for the project. Earlier this year, a fellowship with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism supported Mara Silvers’ series on the roots of Native overrepresentation in Montana’s foster care system. That data-reporting fellowship came with a week of training, a consulting data specialist editor, and a small stipend, which, again, we used to hire a dedicated photographer for the series. And then in May, Alex Sakariassen’s exploration of Montana’s childcare crisis was supported by a grant-funded partnership with the national newsroom Open Campus.Such funding is a longstanding practice, especially in the nonprofit journalism world, though it does seem to have become more common in commercial publishing in the last decade or so as the advertising-supported business model for journalism has faltered and new nonprofits have tried to fill the gap.Grant funding, at least at MTFP, is always disclosed — as with the coal country project acknowledgment that sparked our questioner’s interest. Project-specific support is disclosed alongside stories, and we also list our individual and philanthropic donors on our website. While not all nonprofits that work in or around Montana politics disclose their donors, we consider that transparency essential to our mission.At the heart of the question, of course, is whether grant funding drives what we choose to report or how we report it. The answer to that is a hard no. Grant opportunities are sometimes presented to us with an invitation to apply. If the opportunity aligns with reporting we have independent ambitions to pursue, we’ll apply. Other times, our editors and reporters identify a reporting project — usually an ambitious project that would be hard for us to pull off without outside money or freelance staffing — and we explore grant opportunities that fit the bill.In no case does a granting organization have any editorial control over the way we conceptualize, report or write stories. Per our published policy, we maintain an institutional firewall between coverage decisions and all sources of revenue. In other words, MTFP’s editorial direction and execution are entirely our own.If that policy ever changes, you’ll read about it here first. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.—Brad TyerHighlights ☀️In other news this week —The Montana Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision that put a 2023 law banning certain medical treatments for transgender minors on hold while a lawsuit challenging it proceeds. Mara Silvers reports that justices appear skeptical that the law is aligned with constitutional protections for medical privacy rights.Delivering a farewell speech as his 18 years in the U.S. Senate come to a close, Jon Tester called for campaign finance reform, arguing that loose fundraising rules let candidates campaign via advertisements instead of by talking with voters. Tom Lutey reports that Tester’s election loss this year to Republican Tim Sheehy came despite spending more than his opponent through his campaign account and benefiting from more third-party attack ads.On Our Radar Amanda — Research based on a forensic analysis of the Anzick child, “arguably America’s most famous ancient baby,” indicates mammoths were an important source of nutrition for the Clovis people, who arrived in North America some 15,000 years ago. Brett French explores how Applied Paleoscience researchers analyzed the bones of the Anzick child and compared them to animals that roamed the Northern Great Plains at the same time to reach that conclusion. Science is wild.Matt — I’m keeping an eye on the fallout of the failed Kroger-Albertsons merger. The Associated Press reports that Albertsons has an unstable financial outlook, and company representatives warned that closures could happen absent a merger. Albertsons operates 31 Montana locations, as well as nine stores under the Safeway brand.Katie — I heard about Chris La Tray’s book, “Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home,” when MTFP published an excerpt in August, but only got around to reading it this month. La Tray’s writing combines his personal experiences with the history of the Little Shell and Métis peoples, making for an insightful read if you’re looking to get to know Montana better. Jacob — An artificial intelligence-generated video clip that starts as a gymnast performing a floor routine and morphs into an uncanny valley fever dream made the viral rounds on the internet this week, illustrating both how fast AI tools are maturing and how limited they still are. The clip was generated by OpenAI’s “Sora” video generator, which is separately controversial both for alleged copyright infringement and for its potential to displace traditional video work. Tom — I’m on the hunt for a new vehicle with a manual transmission. In my household, we only drive stick whether we’re off road or on the interstate. Also, we only buy cars we can fix ourselves. The options are few, but stirring.Zeke — Having already played and replayed the usual Christmas albums, I’ve become exhausted by classic holiday music. But Laufey, an Icelandic-Chinese artist known for jazz-inspired pop, has a new album, “A Very Laufey Holiday,” which hits the familiar festive notes while feeling rooted in the 21st century.Eric — With a newly adopted puppy in the house, I’ve found myself suddenly very interested in good dog-training resources. Videos by YouTube dog trainer Zak George, recommended to me by the kind folks at the Lewis & Clark Humane Society, have proven to be a lifesaver.*Some stories may require a subscription. Subscribe!The post ProPublica’s painful doctor story appeared first on Montana Free Press.