Update, Noon PT
Apparently widespread predictions that beleagured Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels was going to get the ax at Tuesday's board meeting were premature.
The board Tuesday issued this rather curt statement: “Tribune’s board of directors is focused on filing the company’s plan of reorganization this Friday and has no comment on any other issue.”
It was accompanied with a note from Gary Weitman, SVP of corporate relations: "Many of you asked for a statement today or last night. We’ll have no other comment on today’s board meeting."
And Romensko quotes Michaels, on his way to lunch with Chief Operating Officer Gerry Spector: "I work here today and I'm still working."
Previously
Lee Abrams -- the former Tribune Co. chief innovation offer who resigned last week in the wake of a scandal involving an e-mail he sent to his staff containing a link to an NC-17 Onion video -- fired off yet another memo on Tuesday, this time to defend himself.
Last week, Abrams sent a company-wide apology for his company-wide e-mail, and Tribune chief Randy Michaels -- who himself is at the center of scandal following a scathing New York Times article -- suspended him without pay. Abrams resigned on Friday.
Here, via Forbes, is Abrams’ latest screed:
I believe it is important to state the facts as they apply to my recent and abrupt departure from Tribune Company. My apology for sending the Onion News Network parody clip stands. Though, as Tribune is a multi-media company competing at the most dramatic cross-roads in media history, I would have hoped that the use of a brilliant parody to demonstrate the ills of popular TV would have been an effective communication vehicle and that people would have taken it as it was intended; a parody that illustrates what not to do. I suspect that a major component of this debacle is being motivated by a power play to seize creative, cultural and business control of the company as it emerges from Chapter 11. Or maybe the idea of a “rock and roll” type from broadcasting invading tradition is so offensive to the fourth estate that my mere presence posed a threat to their grip on the past. I do not know that any of these hypotheses are fact and probably never will.
I do find it ironic that the Onion is a business partner of the Chicago Tribune and that very clip was shown at a recent Chicago Tribune sales meeting to a rousing and positive reaction. This leads me to suspect that the clip itself was not the motivation behind the aggressive coverage this event received. Personally, I think the Chicago Tribune has worked hard to reinvent itself as a modern newspaper serving Chicagoland and I hope I played a small role in helping them achieve what they have done in a short period of time. I hold up copies of this newspaper with pride, and in fairness I want them to know that.
