Fresh Loaf

— Another year is nearing its end, with a new year full of possibility and promise and resolutions ready to begin. Which, of course, means lots of year-end lists. DriftGrift kicks things off with his list of top blog stories of the year, the first of which hits very close to home — the firing of Ken Edelstein as the editor of this publication. Nicely put, my brother.

— And speaking of this publication, Steve Fennessy checks in at CityScape on the latest in CL’s bankruptcy. There was another hearing today at the bankruptcy court in Tampa.

— Oh, my god … can it be that what’s-her-name — the blonde wig girl who can’t sing but has Dallas Austin as her producer — was right after all? WAGA’s Dana Fowle went on the celebrity investigative beat to dig up the dirt on NeNe of “Real Housewives of Atlanta” fame. Over at Live Apartment Fire, Doug ponders whether that’s a good thing. Should I care? It’s kinda like a traffic accident; I’m fixated.

— Isn’t there just something about Nancy Pelosi that gives you the creeps? It certainly does for Politits, who has a few words of advice for the speaker of the House.

— When I think of city downtowns, I think of New York and Paris — you know, places that actually have nightlife and people in their city centers. Not the ghost town that is Atlanta. B King over at Terminal Station was downtown after a Hawks game, however, and says that for once it actually felt like a real downtown.

— And, finally, the lovely Sara at Going Through The Motions has discovered that Francine Reed is a guaranteed cure for the blues. She has a YouTube link to Frannie singing “Wild Women Don’t Get The Blues,” one of my favorites too.

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Not going to city hall, he's going down the street to CNN's Headline News (Image courtesy Clark Howard)

A heaping helping of news headlines from me exclusively to you; cuz that’s just how I aggregate…

• Clark Howard isn’t running for mayor, he’s got far more important things to do, like, hosting his own show on CNN’s Headline News.
• Another spoonful of schadenfreude courtesy Atlanta Magazine’s Steve Fennessey. I bet CL’s bad news is just making nice with their web traffic (no hard feelings, Steve, ours too).
• Speaking of which, are we to be in good company(?): Tribune Co. is considering filing for bankruptcy protection.
• Remember when gas was just a buck fifty a gallon? Yea actually, I just paid $1.39 last night…
• Should hospitals follow patients through Twitter? Sure, until they discover patients can block them … (and you should follow us instead).
• Well that was quick: Pakistan arrests suspected Mumbai terror plotter.
• Democrats want to give automakers a bailout, but with strings attached: they want a seven-person board to oversee the companies’ restructuring. They call it, the “auto board.”
  
• President-elect Barack Obama was on Meet the Press yesterday and reiterated the need to save the auto industry, but said it should be “conditioned on an auto industry emerging at the end of the process that actually works.” The cynic in me asks, “what about oversight to the financial industry?”
• Barry Cooper is your new BFF.
• And from one morning newsdome to another morning briefing, say hello to the Mother Nature Network.

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Atlanta Magazine’s Steve Fennessy has another update on CL’s adventures in bankruptcy.

CL CEO Ben Eason asked the court handling the company’s case for permission to hire financial advisor Bryan Crino of Tampa-based Skyway Financial Partners. Eason proposes paying Crino $495 per hour, as well as a commission between $250,000 to $600,000.

This week, CL’s creditors asked the bankruptcy judge to reject Eason’s proposal.

Fennessy:

“[CL's largest creditor] balks at Skyway’s “lavish compensation,” which includes at least a $600,000 bonus if the company is sold. Atalaya also points out that Crino, as he himself admitted in court papers, owns an interest in an entity that owns shares in Creative Loafing. Hmm…. A conflict of interest? Atalaya thinks so, and says that Crino is far from a disinterested party.

As far as that $600,000 clause is concerned, Atalaya has more to say, asserting such a clause would “bind” Creative Loafing Inc. to exorbitant fees for services that the chain may not even need.

In what appears to be a not-so-subtle jab at Skyway, Atalaya mentions that Crino and company helped advise Eason on the purchase of the Chicago and D.C. papers last year. “Less than two years later, the value of the combined operations of the Debtors is less than the sales price for those two operations alone. It is currently unknown … whether the Debtors believe they may have claims against Skyway … relating to any prior advice.”

Fennessy, a former senior writer and news editor at CL, also reports that morale is low as the staff awaits further layoffs.

“We’ll probably continue to trim staff as it relates to market conditions,” Eason told Fennessy last week.

Neither Eason, who was in Atlanta this week, nor anyone else at the company, has addressed the staff about layoffs.

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Creative Loafing Inc. has asked a bankruptcy judge to allow it to pay $495 an hour to the investment banker who engineered last year’s purchase by CL of two other alternative weeklies, according to Atlanta Magazine’s Steve Fennessy. This time, Skyway Capital Partners’ Bryan Crino would be tasked with helping to solve the company’s financial woes.

Under the company’s Nov. 10 motion to the bankruptcy court, if Crino engineered a sale of Creative Loafing Inc., he and Tampa-based Skyway would be paid “whichever is greater—a cut of the sale or $600,000,” Fennessy wrote Friday on his Cityscape blog.

CL Inc. CEO Ben Eason told Fennessy in an interview that Creative Loafing Inc. — which filed Sept. 29 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — isn’t for sale: “When you draft these agreements, you’re trying to think through any and all options that might come up.” But Eason does think Crino could help raise the money Eason needs to “recapitalize and recast” the company’s debt. For that, CL Inc. is proposing that Crino be paid at least $250,000.

Meanwhile, Eason said the company may suffer more layoffs. “We’ll probably continue to trim staff as it relates to market conditions,” he told Fennessy.

Creative Loafing/Atlanta is one of six alternative newsweeklies owned by Creative Loafing Inc. The others are Creative Loafing/Charlotte, Creative Loafing/Tampa, Creative Loafing/Sarasota, the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper.

The Chicago and DC papers were purchased last July in the purchase that Crino helped orchestrate. Eason is battling the Atalaya investment fund, which lent CL Inc. $30 million as part of that deal, for control of the company.

The motion to has yet to be ruled upon by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Caryl Delano.

Fennessy is a former news editor and senior writer for Creative Loafing/Atlanta.

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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.

(more…)

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