Another day, another development and time once again for Kansas City Star employees to be thankful that they’re not working at a paper owned by Chicago-based Tribune Company.
On Wednesday, Tribune Company, which publishes The Chicago Tribune and several other major newspapers, indefinitely suspended Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams because of a company-wide memo he sent out on Monday, linking to lewd videos.
The Chicago Tribune reported today that the e-mail “spurred a rash of employee complaints.”
The Trib’s story noted that the Abrams incident followed by less than a week a New York Times front-page story that said Tribune Company managers who took over after an ownership sale in December 2007 had fostered a sexist “frat house” in Tribune Tower, which houses Tribune corporate offices as well as The Chicago Tribune.
I blogged yesterday about The New York Times story, a well-reported and illuminating piece by David Carr about a once-proud company that has lost its way.
Randy Michaels, chief executive of Tribune Company, said in an e-mail announcing the suspension: “Lee recognizes that the video was in extremely bad taste and that it offended employees…This is the kind of serious mistake that can’t be tolerated; we intend to address it promptly and forcefully.”
It was none other than Michaels, however, who at one time was associated with 61 Country radio in Kansas City, who signed off a couple of years ago on an eye-opening rewrite of the employee handbook.
“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook said. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process…
“This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”
In light of this week’s developments, I guess Michaels, Abrams and other top managers got a little more of a “nonlinear” climate than they wanted.
Today’s Chicago Tribune story says Abrams apologized Tuesday “to everyone who was offended” by the Monday e-mail memo, which contained a link to a video newscast parody labeled “Sluts.” The video included female nudity.
Like Michaels and many others who became top Tribune managers in 2008, Abrams has a background in radio. He was chief programming officer for XM Satellite Radio (now Sirius-XM) before moving to Tribune Company.
A Forbes blogger asked yesterday how Abrams “could have been so reckless as to send a company-wide memo touting a lewd video at a time when he and his fellow executives were already under fire for behaving like frat boys?”
The blogger quoted Dan Neil, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, as saying, “Lee Abrams is an idiot.”
Neil, who now writes for the Wall Street Journal, said that part of Abrams’ job was to send out weekly “Think Pieces,” theoretically aimed at boosting morale among the troops.
“No one could ever figure out what those Monday morning missives meant,” Neil was quoted as saying. “And all I can say is that at least one of them finally had a positive effect.”
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Let’s be clear: It’s not the Tribune newsroom that is under scrutiny. It’s the corporate office, which is also based in Tribune Tower.
What an absolutely fascinating evolution of the Train Wreck described with gritty detail in the NYT article and recounted in your previous blog. The last 2 years of executive excess bubble revelations pale in comparison. I’ve always heard of “crazies running the asylum” but even in this increasingly misogynistic, creationist, consumerist society the sheer scale of buffoonery and license to humiliate and denigrate under the cover of “management style” in a 100+ yr old branded company of noble 4th Estate tradition is beyond dumbfounding. This isn’t the emergence of a new breed of cat, this is ground zero of a cultural disease. I’m not even sure I have the stomach to view it from a distance and clearly the disease is spreading. Fortunately our passports are up to date. Ciao. JS
Thanks, Chicago. I clarified it to say Tribune Tower, which houses corporate offices and The Chicago Tribune.
Jim
There’s a certain irony here that the same essentially liberal mentality that created an open environment for Howard Sterns and Don Imus now becomes prudish when that mentality pays them a house call. I ‘ve often said that the definition of a liberal is one who wants social change for someone else and this appears to be the perfect example.
As for a comparison with The Star, The Tribune at least had the integrity to suspend this rascal for his excessive creativity. Compare that to The Star’s approach to Mike Fannin’s excesses with subordinates. Where is his suspension?
Or compare it with some of the vicious and mean spirited communications The Star’s so-called ombudsman has leveled at the readers he allegedly represents. No action taken.
After spending a decade in the cloistered confines of university sociology departments I get more than a little amusement out of chatting with some of my former mentors who at one time were held up for their radical views, but are now holed up in their offices for fear that they will utter an inappropriate pronoun, or be ridiculed for embracing the views of dead white males.
How interesting that the same folks who often delight in trying to shock people of faith and conservatives recoil in horror like Victorian prudes upon the hearing of the word pussy, or the sight of a nude female (after all, I thought that was part of being liberated).
How ironic this is indeed following on the footsteps of the generation who grew up on Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.
Fitz — It’s nice to learn about Laura’s Star alumni reunion only AFTER it happened!…*laughing*…I’ve been back in KC since 2006 and haven’t had a lot of contact with people I clerked for at The Star…
Anyway, been a lurker on here for a while now but nice to see my ex-boss back in the writing game again…Good stuff about the corporate “leadership” at Tribune…As an ex-LA Times employee, it’s been sad to see what’s happened to a great paper since the 1990s…
Drop me a line if you can and we can catch up with the KCK days again…
Steve Byrd
Good to hear from the man whose very first story in The Kansas City Star hit the front page! Not many reporters can say that. (I was happy to edit the story and almost as thrilled as you when it went “out front.”)
I didn’t know you were back. Thanks for reading and commenting. I’ll be in touch.
Jim