It's Unanimous. Strib Guild Says Par Should Resign

Wednesday’s meeting of Star Tribune Guild stewards ended with the 25 gathered employees blowing past a proposal to put a “no confidence” vote on publisher Par Ridder before membership. Instead, arguing that “no confidence” was “a little soft” considering Ridder’s behavior, the stewards voted unanimously to have membership vote on demanding Ridder’s resignation.

The membership vote is scheduled for 4:30 pm next Tuesday.

Reporter Chris Serres, a Strib Guild officer, says, “It became a pretty long discussion. The prevailing view was that if we believe what he has done is a violation of our code of ethics a ‘no-confidence’ vote is kind of soft. So then we had to work out questions of a proper statement and timing.”

Serres says some of the 25 or so stewards felt it would be better to wait until Judge David Higgs makes a judgment on MediaNews’ request for an injunction against Ridder, something that make take another month or more. But eventually the winning argument was that regardless of the fine legal definitions, Ridder’s behavior is already beyond what is acceptable within the Guild’s Code of Ethics. “We do have one, you know,” Serres joked. And that the membership, another several hundred Strib employees, should be given the opportunity to express themselves on the matter.

Prior to Wednesday’s vote I had spoken with several veteran Stribbers who were taking a, “What’s the point?” view of the “no confidence” idea. Since there was no money or job security in it for the Guild or the newsroom, they said, it struck them as a bit limp-wristed.

The counter-argument was that a vote of “no confidence” is unusual enough it would make a valid statement to the local community and journalists nationally that Ridder has violated a standard of professional behavior his employees value and feel themselves bound to observe. Put another way, whatever the legal decision, professional journalists are required to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than what the law may allow, and Ridder isn’t anywhere close to that standard.

Whether a call for his resignation, (formally: For Avista Capital Partners to request Ridder’s resignation), ups the ante over “no confidence” I don’t know. But Serres says a committee within the stewards will go through the Guild’s Code of Ethics and produce a statement detailing Ridder’s transgressions in preparation for next Tuesday’s vote.

Incidentally, not to bury the lede, but corroborating sources at a recent meeting with MediaNews owner Dean Singleton confirm his statement that he has already spent $3 million on his suit against Par Ridder. While Singleton has laid out serious cash for lawyers and forensic work on the Pioneer Press computer files Ridder booted into the Star Tribune system, at least one prominent local attorney believes it is reasonable Avista has or soon will spend as much defending him.

Last time I checked $6 million was somewhere in the range of 40% of the Star Tribune’s annual newsroom budget. Obviously I don’t have the precise numbers. But the point is you can cover a lot of Minnetonka Sewer Commission meetings with $6 million … and eventually the loser in this disgraceful mess will be looking to paper over their losses with another round of “right-sizing” (to quote Ridder) in their Twin Cities subsidiaries.