The Deal from Hell (45 page)

Polly Ross, my trusted assistant, suspected something was up when I began canceling appointments, including one she was trying to make with Maria Shriver, to discuss a possible profile in the
Los Angeles Times Magazine
. I knew the 2008 newsroom budget would have to be cut by at least $5 million. But I suspected that was just the start of the process and I didn't want to impose cuts that would kick in after I'd left. So I asked my managing editors and Wolinsky to make the cuts themselves. When the editors assembled in my office, though, they started to question me about my goals for the coming year. I showed them what to cut in five minutes. Cutting a budget was easy; I'd had lots of practice.

I had decided that I would make a statement to the staff and to the community once the news of my departure broke. I felt I had an obligation to explain what had happened and that I had not abandoned the newspaper, particularly given the initial speculation that Tribune had, in the words of former editorial page editor Andrés Martinez, “sent me to the provinces to quell a rebellion by the natives.” Besides, I had given my word that I was there for the long haul; they deserved an explanation from me and not some baloney from the PR department. But no matter
how
the news broke, I knew this wasn't going to be pretty. I was the third editor in three years and the second to be fired by Hiller in less than a year and a half.

I told a few trusted friends what was about to happen, including Ann Marie Lipinski. Lipinski wanted to phone Bill Pate, with whom she'd been in regular contact during the negotiations leading up to the sale. But Pate was traveling in the Middle East, and I was wary of running to someone in the Zell camp at the first sign of trouble. I finally called Nils Larsen myself and told him what had happened. “Well, I'm
not for that,” he said. He wanted to take up the matter with Zell. But I told him that I had called because I didn't want him to be blindsided by the news, not because I was hoping for an appeal. I urged him to give Hiller his day in court. When Pate returned to the United States, he wrote to Lipinski asking her if things were OK. When she replied that everything was OK in Chicago but there were “storm clouds out West,” Pate never responded.

When he assumed control, Zell had emphatically told everyone that the publishers and CEOs of individual papers would be responsible for their operations, not some bureaucrat in the Tribune Tower. I didn't hold high hopes that he would countermand the first major decision that Hiller had made, even if he wanted to. But I also figured that my situation would force everyone to show their hand. I contacted my lawyer, Marty Cohn, in Chicago and was contemplating when I would leave, when Hiller called and asked me to come to his office.

Even in the best of times, Hiller rarely revealed his true thoughts. He desperately wanted to be liked and usually adopted his inquisitive, lawyerly manner in uncomfortable situations, using questions to make his point rather than uttering an opinion. He was doubly uneasy in my presence that day, arousing my suspicion about how he would handle any compensation I was due, particularly since he had never raised the subject. As I sat down, he asked my advice on my successor. I gave him my recommendations (which he would ignore) and asked him to call my lawyer to arrange details of my departure.

I had always been up front with Hiller. I told him frankly that I was going to make a public statement when the news of my departure broke. As usual, he asked if I would provide him my remarks in advance and, as usual, I declined. I had no problem openly disclosing what I intended to say, but I would not allow Hiller or anyone else to censor the words I chose. I assured him I would not be critical of him personally, but would comment on my disagreement with the way the company allocated resources to its newspapers, an issue that I considered central to our disagreement and one I hoped Zell would change. Visibly nervous, Hiller pressed for exactly
what
I would say.
But I wouldn't agree to share my statement before I issued it. At that point, I hadn't yet drafted my remarks.

The next week was extremely uncomfortable. I had not told anyone at the
Times
about Hiller's decision, and I sat through meetings, responding to questions with comments or observations that I knew to be irrelevant. I hated it. The newsroom gossip mill cranked out rumors that Hiller and I had deep disagreements on the budget, the kind that had led to Baquet's dismissal. I dreaded the appearance of a story in
LA Observed
. Finally, I phoned my friend Howard Bragman, owner of Fifteen Minutes, a public relations company that specialized in crisis communications, and consulted him about what to do. By the Friday before the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, rumors had escalated into speculation that Hiller wanted to replace me with Stanton. Several journalists dropped by my office to ask if the rumors were true; others, like Aaron Curtiss, a friend of Stanton, walked by me in the hallway and avoided my gaze. Finally, I approached Hiller and told him we needed to do
something
before we had a leak.

Although he acted as if he was still considering who would be editor, I knew Hiller wanted to appoint Stanton because Stanton would commit to the sort of deep newsroom cuts that Hiller felt were needed. But Hiller feared the blowback from members of the editorial department who supported me or didn't like Stanton. We talked for an hour or two about the situation and discussed several scenarios. In closing, Hiller said he was traveling to Chicago for the long weekend and would announce a decision when he returned on Tuesday. As I left that afternoon, I advised Hiller to have a plan in place in case the news leaked over the weekend. He agreed that he would. Once again, I asked him to call my lawyer.

On Sunday morning, a reporter from the
Wall Street Journal
called me at home. The reporter wasn't a regular on the media beat, and I figured she must have been put on the story by an editor who had received a tip. She allowed that the
Journal
would not publish a paper on the Monday holiday, but that her editors intended to immediately put a small item about my impending dismissal on the Internet. From
her questions, I could tell the paper had solid information. I told her I couldn't comment publicly. As soon as I hung up, I called Hiller in Chicago. Hiller assured me that he didn't intend to comment, either. “So,” he said, “if you don't comment and I don't comment, no story.” I explained that that was not the way it worked, and that the
Journal
would probably have something online soon. Moments later, my BlackBerry buzzed; a friend had sent me a link to the small story that the
Journal
ran on its webpage.

I refused to talk to any reporter before I talked to my staff, which I planned to do on Tuesday morning. When the
Wall Street Journal
reporter called me back, I talked to her on the condition that the story wouldn't run until Tuesday, a commitment the paper honored. I then told her how to contact Hiller and spent the rest of the weekend ducking a flood of calls from other media reporters hot on the trail, as I worked on finalizing the remarks I would make to the staff.

The coverage in Tuesday's papers was heavy; newsroom sources told me that Hiller, who had made some less than flattering comments about me, objected strongly to placing the story on page one of the
Times
, but finally relented and apologized when editors convinced him it would look worse if he didn't. I called the newsroom and arranged to deliver my remarks at 10 a.m. on Tuesday and half wondered whether I would be locked out of the parking garage when I drove into the city that morning.

I walked into the building through the ad department (where I got some nice words and hugs from some of the sales reps), told Ross to get some boxes so I could pack my belongings, and was preparing to make my remarks when Hiller strode into my office. “Well,” he said, “when things start flying, they really fly, don't they?” I replied that I was about to address the newsroom and reiterated that I wouldn't criticize him. It was my intention, I told him, to leave the
Times
after my speech. Again, I urged him to call my lawyer. After Hiller left my office, I walked to the same spot where I had spoken some fifteen months before and bid farewell to a great staff that had given me my chance to earn its respect.

After confirming that I was leaving, I told the staff why:

We had accomplished much in my tenure and, after, highlighting our successes, I thanked everyone, apologized for not spending more time in the trenches, and said it was time to move on. In closing, I addressed the issue at the core of the disagreements between Hiller and myself, the allocation of resources that relied too heavily on accounting acrobatics and marketing clichés and not enough on the creativity and resourcefulness of journalists, who were often wrongly dismissed as budgetary adolescents.

As I explained to the assembled crowd,

I made it clear that I hadn't quit. I refused to embrace a strategy that we would survive long term by diminishing the newspaper, not the printed product, but the values it represents and the quality of its
news reports. When I finished and headed back to my office, Wolinsky congratulated me on my speech, but warned me, as he put it, that it was “going to cost [me] some money.” By noon, I had packed my car, shook many hands, and said goodbye to the
Los Angeles Times
. I had taken my stand, said my piece, and referred all other calls from journalists to my departing remarks.

The next morning I arose early to a clear sky, a bright sun, and a story in the
Los Angeles Times
quoting Zell saying that he backed Hiller's decision. No surprise there. I e-mailed Zell and said I understood his thinking and that I would be glad to discuss my views of the paper and industry with him. He wrote back thanking me: “I think you can understand that if I'm going to autonomate the business units, I also have to give them responsibility. I therefore support David in his decisions and will continue to do so in the future. Having said that, I'm going to miss you and I very much appreciate your offer to help; don't be shocked if I take you up on it.” As I sat on my front porch drinking a cup of coffee and watching the waves of the Pacific crashing down on Manhattan Beach, I suddenly realized something frightening: For the first time since I'd been a teenager, I didn't have anywhere to go that day. I didn't have a job.

I had been a journalist my entire adult life and didn't want to do anything else. My daughter was still in school, and I had her tuition bills to pay; my son was working on his PhD and needed support from time to time. Thankfully, my wife still had her job, so I didn't have to worry about health insurance. I had just been fired in a headline-grabbing incident that announced to the world I was in my sixties. I truly didn't know if the paper would continue my salary; it canceled my free subscription the day after my remarks.

I decided to stay in Manhattan Beach until the weather in Chicago improved. By mid-February, I received an e-mail from Tribune Company. When I had agreed to become editor of the
Los Angeles Times
, I had secured a two-year contract outlining my salary and benefits,
including a provision that guaranteed my pay if I were “terminated without cause.” One of their attorneys informed me that the terms of my contract would be honored only if I signed a “mutual non-disparagement agreement” that would prohibit me from saying anything negative or create an unfavorable impression “in any manner whatsoever” about “Tribune Company, its parents, subsidiaries, predecessors, successors, affiliates, officers, directors, agents, shareholders, attorney and employees or any of them” from here to eternity.

I had traveled the globe as a reporter and followed events closely as an editor; I'd seen a world where powerful people muzzle those who speak out. I had seen how dictators or despots immediately seized the press when they took power. I'd seen it happen time and again, the world over. Even in places like Guatemala, where authoritarian governments barely tolerated the press, newspapermen like José Zamora at
el Periodico
risked their lives to publish, to maintain a free press, to amplify the voices of the dispossessed. I was hardly on a par with a dissident in Moscow, or Nelson Mandela, or Zamora, but I now had a lawyer for a company that sponsored an institute dedicated to honoring freedom of speech trying to silence me or force me to voluntarily surrender my right to speak out. Agreeing to don a muzzle violated everything for which I stood. Handily, the company also read my contract in a way that would deny me extra money due for dismissal without cause.