Franklin Nachman, an attorney with Littler Mendelson who was part of the legal team working on behalf of Channel 7, didn't return a call seeking comment. David Lane, Minshall's lawyer, wasn't so shy. He acknowledges that Channel 7 could appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court (the station has ninety days from the ruling to file) but doubts the high court would take it on. "The Tenth Circuit simply applied black-letter, basic law principles that are well settled to this case," Lane maintains. "There are no sexy issues for the court to get involved with. I look at it as a resounding opinion from top to bottom. We won every single aspect of it. There is no downside." At present, Lane says he is negotiating with Channel 7's lawyers "to try to circumvent further delays -- maybe give them a slight discount if they cough up the cash quick. But the total package they're ultimately going to have to give Dave is in the neighborhood of $800,000."
Although this sum, which includes interest, sounds awfully sweet, Lane stresses that it's taken Minshall a long time to get within smelling distance of it. "He lost his job in 1997, and it's now 2003, and he still doesn't have any money. There really has to be some better way for the federal courts to handle these cases rather than to take six years, because it can have absolutely devastating consequences."
Brett Amole
Roger Ogden says 9's just fine.
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Minshall, too, expresses frustration over what he calls "stalling tactics designed to starve me out. Their strategy all along was to stretch this out as long as they could to make me go away -- and I haven't." Far from it: Minshall has made a hobby of handbilling the Channel 7 parking lot, and on March 14, he and his family picketed the station and expressed their displeasure, using a loudspeaker to commemorate the anniversary of what he calls "my untimely demise. I don't know if it shook them up, but it made us feel good -- and a little less helpless."
So, too, would getting what a jury says he deserves. With the finish line finally in sight, Minshall's got only one question left: "Where's my money?"
The doctor is in: The image rehabilitation of Dean Singleton, whose MediaNews firm owns the Denver Post, continues apace. Once upon a time, Singleton was among the most widely reviled figures in newspapering, but the headline on a cover story in the March/April edition of the Columbia Journalism Review provides him with a much cheerier nickname: "The Newspaper Surgeon." In the piece itself, author Scott Sherman wonders if by buying ailing newspapers, the tycoon is saving them or hastening their demise. "How would you ask that question to a heart surgeon?" Singleton responds. "It's pretty difficult to go blame a heart surgeon for the patients he loses on the table and not give him credit for the scores and scores he saves."
Of course, Sherman's article documents less laudatory moments in Singleton's history, too, even quoting from a 1975 memo in which the boss told staffers at the Fort Worth Press, which he had just purchased, that their jobs depended in part on how many coupons for a local department store were used -- so they should encourage their wives to spend, spend, spend. Unsurprisingly, these are the aspects of the profile that Singleton found most disposable. "Your past is part of you, but at this point, I think people would be sick of reading about it," he says. "I certainly am. There's so much that has happened in the last ten years that didn't get in there, and it's a lot more interesting."
Also fascinating was one reason Singleton gave for entering into a joint operating agreement with the Rocky Mountain News, rather than simply attempting to bury it. Sherman writes that Singleton "had heard that one of Colorado's wealthiest citizens was interested in the [News], and he was afraid of a new infusion of cash and a much longer newspaper war."
So who was this prosperous local? Phil Anschutz? Peter Coors? Blinky the Clown? Unfortunately, Singleton refuses to specify. "I was aware through industry discussion that one or more players had made inquiries about buying the Rocky," he says. "I knew that was out there, and since then, I've had it verified both from interested parties and from folks at [News owner] Scripps that there were people who had made inquiries."
This admission isn't an acknowledgement that Singleton and Scripps violated the Newspaper Preservation Act, which makes JOAs legal; representatives of a failing paper aren't prohibited from signing such a pact if potential buyers exist and it's not a last resort. All the same, the thought that a JOA might have been avoided -- and truly unfettered newspaper competition might exist in Denver today -- isn't a happy one.
To put it another way, both patients might still be alive without having gone under the knife. Surgery can be such a pain.
