The Silent Mastermind
The Tribune Company climbed into bed with the Chandlers in March 2000, when it swallowed the Times Mirror Company, an acquisition disingenuously described in the pages of the Tribune as a “merger,” even a “marriage.” The city room of the Times Mirror flagship, the Los Angeles Times, saw it for what it was: a conquest and occupation.
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A Tribune veteran told me he read Greising’s profile and “wanted to go take a shower.”
Fuller and FitzSimons didn’t like each other much, and as 2004 ended, Fuller quit. The company gave him a $51,500 monthly retainer for “consulting services” that rubbed even some of his many admirers the wrong way and office space in the Tower. He gave the company a signed guarantee of “nondisparagement.” That is, he wouldn’t say anything about it that wasn’t nice.
8 As his career in radio drew to a close, National Public Radio gave my brother-in-law John McIlwraith a national audience. On All Things Considered he was the commentator who’d show up now and then to wryly recall his impoverished youth in Scotland. In 2001 catastrophe brought him back to the air: a doctor told him his stomach was cancerous and had to be removed. John explained on NPR that this terrible news wasn’t a death sentence but a life sentence: “I have to get on with my life because it might leave me soon.” So he arranged a good-bye party for his stomach. My sister baked a ham.
