Niagara Falls Reporter

The Niagara Falls Reporter was launched on June 28, 2000, by veteran journalist Mike Hudson,[3] who had previously worked for newspapers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York City. Hudson had also been a reporter for the Niagara Gazette and was the lead singer of Cleveland punk band The Pagans.[3] He died on October 27, 2017.[3]

The Reporter played a central role in the Laborers Local 91 story, in which the entire leadership of the Niagara Falls union pleaded or were found guilty on numerous federal charges of extortion and racketeering. The case resulted in Hudson being the only journalist subpoenaed to testify in the trials. The paper also uncovered evidence that began a federal investigation and subsequent indictment of former Niagara Falls Mayor Vince Anello on charges of public corruption.

The Reporter published a series of articles from late 2008 through 2010 on the twin leases that the Maid of the Mist boat tour company had with the Niagara Parks Commission (NPC) in both Ontario and New York. The Reporter was the first paper to publish the terms of the leases and to report that the NPC secretly reduced the rent while excluding other bidders. In late 2009, the minister of tourism for the province of Ontario ordered the Maid of the Mist's lease to be offered to external bidders for the first time in the history of Niagara Parks.

Other notable stories which first appeared in the Reporter caused the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Places, which owns and operates Niagara Falls State Park to the extreme detriment of the economy and standard of living in downtown Niagara Falls, to shelve plans to build a huge resort complex on Goat Island in the park, change the location of a new Parks Police barracks off the edge of the Niagara Gorge, and return to the practice of holding public hearings after having expedited its so-called "Landscape Improvements Plan" which expanded parking lots and food service in the Niagara Falls State Park.

It was also first revealed in the Reporter that the Niagara Falls Water Board was secretly planning with the Cuomo administration to import trainloads of toxic "frack" water from natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania for "treatment" and discharge into the Niagara River and subsequently Lake Ontario.

In 2011, the city council of Niagara Falls voted to endorse the Niagara Falls Reporter as the council's weekly newspaper for publishing its public announcements as well as any other matters the council wishes to be printed or published.

• Official website