Hearst in a bind
Quiet fight against unionization afoot
HEARST executives were blindsided by the news that editorial employees in the magazine division that houses Cosmopolitan, Esquire and other titles wanted to unionize.
And now they’re trying to persuade staffers to reverse course, sources tell Media Ink.
The Writers Guild of America East on Veterans Day revealed that an organizing drive that kicked off nearly a year ago had ended when an “overwhelming majority” of Hearst’s 500 editorial employees turned in their pledge cards.
Hearst Magazines President Troy Young and Chief Content Officer Kate Lewis allegedly called an emergency meeting on Nov. 12 with editors-in-chief and other top lieutenants to berate them for not knowing about the plan brewing under their noses for almost a year.
“I had no idea employees felt this way,” said Young, according to one insider.
Editors-in-chief were instructed to start meeting with staffers one-on-one to “discourage them from joining the union,” according to one source. “They were adamant about not putting anything in writing.”
Hearst did not return e-mails seeking comment.
Have a stake
Michael Ferro, the former chairman of Tribune Publishing, is selling his 25 percent stake in the newspaper giant for $118 million to Heath Free
man’s Alden Global Capital — a New York hedge fund that has been called a destroyer of local media.
The deal comes to $13 a share, a big premium over Tribune’s recent trading price. Tribune’s stock on Tuesday closed at $9.73.
Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune, the troubled New York Daily News, the Hartford Courant and the Allentown Morning Call, among other papers.
Ferro, the single-largest shareholder in Tribune, took over in 2016, and changed the name briefly to the widely ridiculed “Tronc” to emphasize digital media. He served as its chairman through May 2018, where he fought off a hostile takeover by Gannett that would have paid more than $15 a share. The stock has skidded since then.
Alden’s MNG, which owns the Denver Post and the Boston Herald, had previously tried to make a $1.36 billion hostile takeover of Gannett, but was rebuffed earlier this year.
“The Tribune Publishing board of directors looks forward to working with Alden to enhance our company’s value as the company continues to provide valuable journalism for our customers and communities,” Chairman David Dreier said in a statement.
The news comes the same day that USA Today publisher Gannett finalized its deal to be taken over by New Media Investment Group, uniting the No. 1 and the No. 2 newspaper publishers in a $1.1 billion deal.
‘Doc’ in house
The limited theater run of “Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer” has been extended through the weekend at Quad Cinema on West 13th Street in Manhattan.
The documentary tells the story of the Enquirer, including its beginning as a blood and gore magazine. Founder Generoso Pope Jr. — who had taken over the floundering daily New York Enquirer with a $75,000 loan reputedly from a mafia don — soon changed it to a tabloid filled with celebrity gossip and bizarre stories to make it palatable to consumers at checkout counters in supermarkets.
Among the highlights are how the magazine used a cousin of Elvis Presley to furtively snap a picture of Elvis in his coffin in 1977 — for an issue that sold a record 7 million copies.
The documentary concludes in the current era with David Pecker as the CEO of the embattled parent company American Media Inc. and its controversial role in the “catch and kill” scandals that ensnared AMI in a federal probe into alleged campaign financing violations of President Trump.
Among the noted journalists interviewed in the documentary are Carl Bernstein, the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, New York Times Maggie Haberman, Media Ink’s own Keith J. Kelly and longtime Enquirer Editorin-Chief Steve Coz.
Chairwoman
Right-leaning TV network Sinclair Broadcast Group appears to have skipped Tuesday’s impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives. Stephanie Ruhle of NBC was happy to jump into its abandoned seat. She posted a picture of her press pass on the vacant Sinclair seat on Twitter. “Well--no risk of @WeAreSinclair popping up with comments,” she tweeted. “On this historic day, their decision not to come has resulted in me getting a seat.” A Sinclair spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.