Thursday, October 15, 2009
Media / News Bites Catching Up With Black and Radler
Posted by Michael Miner on Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 4:50 PM
Whatever happened to Conrad Black and David Radler, the two scamps from Canada who in addition to the Sun-Times controlled about half the dailies in Canada at one point, and, when they decided to sell them off, arranged huge noncompete payments for themselves that landed them both behind bars?
Radler pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of mail fraud and testified against Black, an act of attrition that earned him a 29-month sentence. He served 10, was released from prison in British Columbia, and is now back in the business, running a small chain of papers called the Alberta Newspaper Group out of Vancouver. Meanwhile, the vestige of Black and Radler's former empire, the Sun-Times Media Group, declared bankruptcy, and recently so did CanWest Global Communications, the Canadian media giant that bought a lot of those titles Black and Radler unloaded for about $3 billion.
Who better now to weigh in on the sad state the press finds itself in than David Radler? Here he is on Canadian TV surveying the industry. "The newspaper business hasn’t fallen off a cliff," he says. "Most of the newspapers…have weathered the [economic] storm, probably not as well as they wanted to and probably not as well as they should have, but the point is they’ve weathered the storm. We're now at a point where there's potential to increase the values of those operations."
Would you be a buyer? he's asked. "If financing was available, I would consider it, yes," he says. Is it? "Well, financing is more difficult in my situation than it used to be," he allows. But, "I'm in the business and I'm in the business to grow."
Black was convicted of three counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 78 months in prison, which he's serving in Florida. His appeal will be heard in December by the Supreme Court. Prison hasn't silenced Black, and who would wish it had? Just on Thursday Canada's National Post, a paper he founded, carried his views on Barack Obama's presidency, an essay that begins, "The whole Obama era to date has been wasted in a historic, amateurish botch of the health-care issue."
Comments (7)
Showing 1-7 of 7
Who better than Radler to weigh in on the news business?
I might add - who better than Black to weigh in on reigns that were historic, amateurish botches?!
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Michael, I came to your blog to see your take on the investors in the STNG. You are always way behind the times on this blog. It's very annoying.
"Don't they make shanks anymore?"
Maybe we could take up a collection to buy one for his cellmate.
Radler must be laughing his ass off....sitting pretty in Vancouver and back in the biz and anyone who knows Radler's history knows he's making money. Black, rip him all you want,
he may not win re/SCOTUS but the somewhat esoteric legal argumment he's pursuing (no room to go into it here without putting anyone who cares to sleep) has huge precedent-setting implications that affects the whole US judicial process. If not deemed important, why would SCOTUS even entertain it? They'd just let him bask in the Fl. sunshine and write his books while not counting the untold millions he's stashed off-shore. The ovious irony is that the ST financed his defense. The not-so-obvious one would be if Black actually wins w/SCOTUS. Talk about having the last laugh!
Both of these assholes need to be drawn and quartered. Think of the misery these thieving SOBs caused. How many people lost their jobs and how many cuts we've all had to take. I remember Radler's arrogance one day as he walked through out newsroom. If I knew then what I know now, I would have let him have it.
I hope someone is there the day that Black is let out of jail and gives him exactly what he deserves.
Doesn't David Radler's daughter own a bunch of USA newspapers in Guymon, Oklahoma, Sweetwater, TX, Rhode Island and many other towns? Does David Radler have any control over USA newspapers his daughter might own?
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