Monday, October 5, 2009
Media / News Bites The Other Bankruptcy
Posted by Michael Miner on 10.05.09 at 11:04 AM
Have I been writing too much lately about the Sun-Times Media Group? It's not the only bankrupt newspaper company in town.
There's also the Tribune Company, whose proposal to pay 700 top managers up to $66 million in bonuses is running into heavy weather, in bankruptcy court and in this column by media writer David Carr in the New York Times.
Says Carr, "The bonuses at issue in the court in Delaware offer a nice window into the entitlement and tone-deafness that has prevailed at the company."
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The tone of Carr's column has it just about right. What's astonishing at first glance is that the creditors are supporting the bonuses. But then, you have to figure that lenders and pillagers are probably cut from pretty much the same cloth.
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There are few words to describe how despicable it is that the Tribune Co. is asking for these bonuses. I'd love to hear what the reporters, editors and photographers who were laid off in the past year have to say about it.
I would need more information to come to a conclusion about whether the bonuses makes sense. So I have no opinion on that. But what I do find rather unfortunate is Carr's insiduation that all 700 of these people were responsible for the failed purchase of the company that resulted in its bankrupcy. There is absolutely no excuse for the increadibly misleading first two paragraphs in that article:
"Let’s say that a group of corporate executives uses scads of debt to take over a struggling company, sells off some profitable assets, lays off thousands of employees while achieving miserable results. And then, less than a year after saddling the company with $8 billion in debt, they opt for bankruptcy.
You’d expect them to walk the plank, or at the very least, spend a good stretch of time in the naughty corner. But you wouldn’t expect the top 700 managers to collect $66 million in bonuses. "
The notion that all 700 of those employees were involved with the purchase of the economy is utterly ludicrous. And please don't say that he didn't state that explicitly. He very clearly implied that they were somehow responsible for the company's current financial situation. I guarantee you that no more than a few dozen, at most, of those executives had anything even remotely to do with arranging the purchase of the company. And I highly doubt that any more than five of them, if that, made important decisions about such things as the terms and structure of the deal. The overwhelming majority of the 700 executives never had the slightest thing to do with anything that caused the bankrupcy. If the New York Times really wants to be considered the news organization that everyone trusts it is time they started acting like it. Otherwise, they will be joining many of their peers in bankrupcy court.
@The original IAC
But the company is utterly in the toilet. It's not just the takeover. It's the entire miserable performance of the company since the takeover, which by numerous measures is worse than the already awful industry average. The proof is in the pudding, and in this case the pudding (not to mention the grossly degraded products dumped on the reading public, but I guess we're not supposed to notice that) stinks. So the executives--who, as a class across industries, tend to win outsized credit when things go well--ought to collectively be falling on their swords. Or jumping out windows. The mere mention of bonuses for these clowns, whose great "genius" consists mainly of throwing productive and blameless workers out on the street, is sickening.
"There are few words to describe how despicable it is that the Tribune Co. is asking for these bonuses. I'd love to hear what the reporters, editors and photographers who were laid off in the past year have to say about it."
Just a reminder that other people, not just journalists, have been let go. You'd probably get a better quote about the whole thing from a former Teamster than a writer.
