Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Indigestion. Today's Wall Street Journal front-pager on New York Times Company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. begins with an anecdote about his removal of Boston Globe publisher Ben Taylor in July 1999. (If you're a WSJ.com subscriber, you can read it here.) Sulzberger tells the Journal that he scheduled a meeting with Taylor at the Four Seasons to express his unhappiness with the Globe's financial performance, and to extricate him from the publisher's office.

Writes Journal reporter Matthew Rose: "Early in the meal, Mr. Sulzberger delivered the news that Mr. Taylor was fired. They left without eating. Mr. Sulzberger says he 'learned a lesson' about letting people go: 'Don't do it over dinner.'"

Here's what I wrote at the time about the demise of Ben Taylor, who today is executive editor of the American Prospect. And thanks to Cape Cod Media, where I learned about the Sulzberger story a few hours before I might have gone looking myself.

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