Posted by chicagomedia.org on January 04, 2009 at 18:34:39:
Radler recalls the 'good times'
Phil Rosenthal | Media
January 4, 2009
Say what you will about former Chicago Sun-Times Publisher F. David Radler, he was a man ahead of his time.
Now that traditional media everywhere are under economic siege, everyone is slashing budgets left and right and seeking creative new revenue sources. Radler was cutting costs years ago with 21st Century urgency and aggressiveness even when his papers were making 20th Century profits. And he found ways to make money others could not, or at least decided they shouldn't.
Oh, sure, anyone who cares about the survival of the Sun-Times Media Group, including readers, advertisers, shareholders, employees and those of us who worked under him, might have hoped Radler had put the windfalls he created back into the company. But he got rich and we didn't, so who's smarter?
Radler is out of prison now, paroled 10 months into a 29-month sentence for fraud, and yet he still wants to give something back -- besides the millions in penalties to the Feds and payback to Sun-Times Media, of course. He told Canada's Globe and Mail he plans to write a book, a "business primer" on how he and former partner and mentor Conrad Black built their global media empire together.
One hopes Radler's memory has improved since Black's 2007 trial, where he was cast as star witness, but don't bet on it.
"Look, I remember the good times, not the bad," Radler told the paper, adding he expected he would say "all positive things" about Black.
Black, who has less than three weeks to get a pardon from President George W. Bush, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years despite Radler's inability to remember details that weren't documented elsewhere. That quirk rendered the one-time lieutenant of little use to the prosecutors with whom he cut a deal to rat out his old partner.
Alas, this apparently will not be "How to Betray Friends But Not Influence Jurors." He thinks too much has been written about that trial and believes what's "more useful and more interesting is the process, at least the business process, of building up the company."
Although he's pretty good at tearing them down.
Radler boasted at a 1980 Canadian government hearing on newspaper ownership that the greatest contribution to journalism from he and his and his business partners was "the three-man newsroom, and two of them sell ads."
Radler said he taught a business course to fellow inmates while behind bars or whatever privileged convicts are kept behind. Now he plans to bring those lessons to those of us looking for a path out of the morass in which the media business finds itself with jaunty tales of buying low and selling high.
If that isn't a feel-good, what is? Especially now, when buying low and selling low is more common.
Alan Mutter, a former Chicago newspaperman now in Silicon Valley, notes on his "Reflections of a Newsosaur" blog that newspaper shares in 2008 dropped an average of 83.3 percent in 2008 -- $64.5 billion in market value gone. Radler's old Sun-Times Media is down to pennies per share, weighed down by his and Black's legacy.
Radler reportedly is banned from visiting the United States as part of his parole. That may be what passes for a happy ending.
(Chicago Tribune)