Tribune Suspends Lee Abrams Over Racy Email

[Liberal_in_LA]

Source: Media Daily News

The Tribune Co. just can't stop hogging the spotlight. Scarcely a day after the beleaguered newspaper publisher reached a deal with creditors to end its tortuous bankruptcy, chief innovation officer Lee Abrams has been suspended for sending an inappropriate email to staffers. Tribune CEO Randy Michaels announced the decision in a memo to employees on Wednesday morning.

In the email, Abrams included a link to a video clip, which he titled "Sluts" from comedy news publisher the Onion, with a parody report about the crash of a VH1 reality TV bus resulting in the spilling of "more than 2,000 pounds of slut." The video included shots of a woman pouring a bottle of wine over her naked breasts.

Abrams apologized after Chicago Tribune editor Gerould Kern and a number of other Tribune staffers complained to human resources about the inappropriate nature of the email. Apparently, Abrams sent the email to illustrate the kind of news reporting that Tribune should not be doing.



Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=137611

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. "Abrams sent the email to illustrate the kind of news reporting that Tribune should not be doing."

:rofl:

"Staff: if you see it in the Onion, don't do that."

[Exilednight]

2. The Tribune company has turned into one of the biggest jokes in .............

media. The NYT did an in-depth piece about the frat house mentality that has taken hold since the new ownership has taken over.

[prolesunited]

3. They denied it all

and this guy proves the case.

Corporate profit takers have decimated print journalism.

[BillH76]

4. Actually, the internet has decimated print journalism

Old fashioned newspapers are running at a razor thin margin of profit. That's why the Tribune went broke. The bourgeois press is being destroyed by a more democratic medium. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

[Exilednight]

5. It's not a good thing. I don;t care how big your blog is ...........

but no strictly online source will ever have the resources of the NY Times, Washington Post, or Boston Globe.

[No Elephants]

8. NYT owns Boston Globe and Globe is broke.

[No Elephants]

7. Do blogs have reporters around the world gathering news or are most of them simply re-hashing

stuff from AP, UPI, Reuters and maybe CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX?


Blogs are great for things like bloviating, speculating and rehashing, but most of our hard news has been coming from a very few conservative owned sources for a while now. I don't see that as improvement.

[prolesunited]

11. Right and wrong

Subscriptions only pay a very small part of newspaper costs. The mainstay was classified ads -- want ads, sale ads, etc. This was followed by real estate and auto industry ads. The Internet killed the classifieds, but they reworked the model a bit and made some cuts. Then when real estate and auto industries went bust, they were forced into bankruptcy and gutting staffs. What is left is a shell of a paper, which forced more people online for info. With fewer eyeballs to reach, advertisers weren't paying as much for the space and then the cycle continued, with more cuts and more papers going under.

This happened against the backdrop of mega mergers in which corporate entities were more concerned about the bottom line than the vital mission journalism plays in a democracy at the Fourth Estate. We have seen a terrible abdication of that role, but we need to remember the role journalism played in giving people the pictures and information that changed the world -- from the civil rights movement to Vietnam to Watergate.

There are very few Internet sites generating original content or doing actual reporting. They are aggregators, gathering information from a variety of outlets. Certainly it's more democratic in that more can contribute, but many lack the skills and background to be a true journalist. Everybody can be a photographer, but not all photographers should be held up a the standard bearer.

[Rex]

6. Suspends = still has a job.

Are they so hard up for news, he just creates it for them so they can make a dime? He must have sent the email to people to remind them not to be stupid and send out emails that can get you fired. :eyes:

[No Elephants]

9. Headline is misleading. "Racy" was not the issue. "Degrading to women" is.

[Blue_Tires]

10. really? an Onion story is considered offensive?

When I worked in newspapers they were posted all around the offices (I even had several in my cube)...