Fresh Loaf

Wow, this is crazy. Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich was just arrested by federal agents for trying to sell Pres.-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Now that’s ballsy!

According to U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald – the guy who nailed Cheny henchman Scooter Libby — Blagojevich had been more or less soliciting bids for the soon-to-be open Senate seat. Under state law, the governor has the sole power to appoint replacement senators.

According to the Washington Post, Blagojevich wasn’t shy about his alleged scam, as revealed on wiretap tapes:

In a Nov. 3 call intercepted by the FBI, Blagojevich told an ally that if he could not get anything personally from a candidate for the job, “then I just might take it,” according to court papers.

“I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden, and uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing,” the governor said in another conversation Nov. 5, the court papers said.

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This is big.

The Tribune Co. is the country’s second-largest publisher of newspapers behind Gannett. (And following the break-up of Knight-Ridder.) The company owns some of the most venerated brand names in print journalism: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant and Orlando Sentinel.

Like Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, Tribune is heavily invested in broadcasting, with two dozens TV and radio stations across the country. But it also owns plenty of other things most publishing companies don’t mess with, such as a sport franchise (Chicago Cubs), a ball park (Wrigley Field) and a cable sports network.

This afternoon, the NYT reports that Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

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This may sound odd for an organization that prides itself on the free flow of ideas, but staffers who are leaving Atlanta Journal-Constitution are being required to sign an agreement that they won’t “disparage” the paper or its management once they leave, according to several AJC employees.

“I was pretty surprised to see that in there,” said one reporter who’s viewed the agreement.

The AJC didn’t care to discuss the stipulation. “As standard practice, we don’t disclose any specifics regarding legal agreements we have with employees,” says spokeswoman Jennifer Morrow.

But one employee said the severance agreement being presented to employees this month bars those who sign it from making “any disparaging or untrue statements about the company,” its subsidiaries or any other employee. The source indicated that the quote was lifted from the actual agreement (I’d love to get my hands on a copy; please e-mail me if you’d like to share one).

An employee who left during last year’s buyout confirmed that similar phrasing was in the severance agreement he signed last year. That employee said the agreement caused some former writers and editors to refrain from discussing newsroom management in media coverage last year, specifically an Atlanta Magazine profile of Editor Julia Wallace by former CL writer Steve Fennessy.

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