The Relotius Scandal Reaches a Small Town in America
Claas Relotius, the DER SPIEGEL journalist outed this week for churning out fraudulent stories, wrote for the magazine about the U.S. town of Fergus Falls. Two locals fact-checked his reporting, and their verdict is devastating -- a perfect example of how DER SPIEGEL's editorial safeguards failed.

In March 2017, DER SPIEGEL published the story "In a Small Town." It was set in Fergus Falls, a town in Minnesota that was supposedly typical of the rural America that made Donald Trump president. The story was written by DER SPIEGEL editor Claas Relotius, who allegedly spent a month reporting in the town.
Small town that supports Trump = racisssst!

On Wednesday, after DER SPIEGEL publically revealed that Claas Relotius had spent years including fraudulent passages, made up quotes and invented scenes in his stories, Anderson and Krohn published their own findings under the headline, "Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town." In the piece, the authors noted that they had spent a year and a half investigating Relotius' story. As Krohn later wrote on Twitter: "Hindsight being what it is, yes, we do wish we had spoken out more forcefully earlier on. But would have anyone believed us?"
Friggin' liar.

A reporter’s dispatch from Trump country featured a ‘Mexicans Keep Out’ sign. But he made it all up.

When an out-of-town journalist showed up in Fergus Falls, Minn., in February 2017, Michele Anderson couldn’t help but feel skeptical. Claas Relotius had been telling residents that he was writing about the state of rural America under President Trump. Anderson, a community arts administrator with progressive political views, was uncomfortable with “the anthropological gaze” that had been cast on communities like her own after the 2016 election. Hopefully, she would later recall thinking, an award-winning international journalist would at least manage to capture more nuance than the pundits had in the months following the election.

As it turned out, the piece that appeared in the respected German weekly magazine Der Spiegel a month later was even worse than she could have imagined. Not only did it rely on stock stereotypes of provincial, gun-toting conservatives, but many of the details were blatantly false.