With OJ Simpson all over the news again, reminding everyone how subtleties like evidence, logic and common sense occasionally have no bearing at all on the American legal system, I was prepared to hear that after reviewing the evidence in the matter of Par Ridder’s multiple, uh, indiscretions, Ramsey County Judge David Higgs had decided that all being fair in love and private equity, this was a case of no harm no foul.
On the other hand … since Ridder conceded virtually every point in Dean Singleton’s complaint you’d have to be a blind horse in a deep forest on a moonless night not to see the guy was guilty as hell. So the ruling is … he sits for a year …
Then this morning, in what has to be regarded as a textbook example of generically obtuse
executive “communication”, Chris Harte, Strib owner Avista Capital Partners’ “face of journalism” and now interim publisher, issued a memo stating “this was clearly not the result we EXPECTED” (my emphasis).
Now, “hoped for” I could accept. But “expected”? Did it occur to Harte that he was communicating to a group of several hundred professional skeptics? Not what you “expected”? As in. “It never occurred to us … .” Now that’s a reassuring display of critical judgment.
To say you “expected” something different in this decision, is kind of like Britney Spears’ (former) managers saying, “Despite the fact she showed up 20 pounds overweight, five margaritas and god knows what else to the wind, refused both a corset rehearsal, we fully expected a brilliant performance.”
Harte also had the bad sense to drag out the rusted, toothless saw about how “recent events [that would be the mendacity and ham-fisted lack of ethics displayed by your hand-picked publisher] will only make us stronger.” As I have said before, if there is one reporter, editor, sweet old lady at the call center or delivery driver so stupid they believe that anything in the past five months has made them “stronger”, they deserve to be fired — or worse, sit on a beach for a year with Par Ridder.
I will continue to gather comments throughout the day, but I have to note a curious line in an early version of Matt McKinney’s official Star Tribune story. It read, “Officials for the Star Tribune and its owner, Avista Capital Partners, could not be immediately reached for comment.”
Really? Granted, Higgs’ decision came out first thing this morning, but we’ve all been on alert since last Friday, awaiting the decision. Neither Harte or editor Nancy Barnes had given McKinney a cell-phone contact for the perfunctory comment? (A later version by McKinney included a bland quote from Barnes asserting the need to continue putting out “a great paper.” I’m not ripping McKinney here, rather the lack of basic coordination on what was going to be a major story.
As the legal battle continues — despite the judgment and the significant cost to Avista of defending Ridder, (very likely more than the $3 million the paper’s former owners put into the Star Tribune Foundation) — the question over the next few months will be, “Why ever let this guy back in the building?”
One prominent Strib writer, requesting anonymity out of an on-going need to support a family, remarked, “The guy has already been overwhelmingly publicly rejected by the journalists he is supposed to lead, and now his tenuous claims to legal legitimacy have been stripped away by the court.
“So now he has a year to rearrange the mirrors in the Magers’ mansion to better advantage, important if you’re a fellow his size. But why bother waiting for him? These guys,” referring to Avista’s stated short term interest in the Star Tribune, “aren’t going to be here that long.
“Ridder got what? $600,000 from Knight-Ridder for promising to stay in St. Paul? Well, that was a contingency for any inconvenience he might suffer. So he’s been paid. This is the inconvenience. Take the money and take a hike.”
More to follow.
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