First a windfall, then the axe

One of the most bizarre situation I ever encountered in journalism came when I was a business writer at U.S. News & World Report from 1979 to 1987.

 

After founder David Lawrence died (and I wrote his obituary for AP), he left 100% of the company to the employees. As circulation grew, workers saw the stock value, determined by an appraiser, grow steadily.

 

 Many older employees decided it was time to cash out and retire. But there were new outside offers for the magazine, and when the bidding was over, its value skyrocketed seven-fold or 15-fold, depending on how it was measured.

 

The magazine staff was shocked but euphoric. The appraisers had never factored in the enormous value of the Washington, D.C., property the magazine owned, right between Georgetown and Dupont Circle. Editor Marvin Stone and his board, who could profit enormously, determined that it was the managers’ fiduciary responsibility to sell the company. For one thing, they couldn’t afford too many people retiring and demanding  cash. The eventual winner was Mortimer Zuckerman, a New York real estate magnate (like Donald Trump), who had designed and built our new office building and later purchased the Atlantic Monthly and New York Daily News.

 

Employees were greedily counting their forthcoming money, and many of them were about to become millionaires, depending on how long they had worked there. As a five-year veteran I didn’t become a millionaire, but I was able to put some money into retirement savings.

 

But wait! Those retirees who cashed out before the bidding war were steamed. Why should these newcomers get the money? The retirees filed suit, and the court battle went on for years, but we eventually got our money.

 

But wait again! In exchange for that big payout, most of us lost our jobs. Zuckerman didn’t like having people around who had gotten rich with his money. The place became so chaotic, we didn’t like working there anyway. People left mysteriously every few days, (Sounds like today’s federal government!)

 

 I was told to leave by the editor, David Gergen, who was a speech writer for presidents ranging from Nixon to Clinton and a famous PBS commentator. Giving me details of my firing was Kathy Bushkin, who was once presidential candidate Garry Hart’s press secretary and also a frequent talking head on TV. Months later, as Gergen was commenting on TV, I quickly switched channels, and there was Bushkin also discussing politics on CNN. I turned the TV  off.

 

But wait one more time!  Well after I landed on my feet at Satellite Orbit magazine, U.S. News’ circulation plummeted along with readership of other print media. (Was it because I left?) In 2010, U S. News got rid of its print magazine and today is best known (and controversial) for rating colleges and universities.