by Dan Haar
Dan Haar covers economic matters for the Courant, and also covered the Tribune-Times Mirror buyout.

BY DAN HAAR

In the days after Tribune Co. declared that it would buy Times Mirror Co., a writer here at The Hartford Courant was heard imploring the paper's graphics artists to cash in their stock options immediately or risk losing them. (There was no such risk.) An editor at the newspaper wondered whether it was true that shares in Times Mirror had briefly reached $105, $10 over the Tribune offer. (There was no such number.)

As I watched the opening tip-off of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, on March 16, three days after the announcement, I could hear three separate conversations in our business news office about stock options. The city desk was no different. Times Mirror employees had received stock options as part of compensation since 1996, and after the Tribune offer, the term March Madness came to have a new meaning here.

Five years of options -- most of us got 100 of them early each year, priced at face value -- were worth roughly $23,000 after the takeover agreement. At the Courant, there were stories about two poor souls in a bureau who cashed theirs out the week before the buyout, for a pittance. There was envy of the handful of fortunate reporters who had been awarded 600 extra options for excellent work. Mostly, the windfall prodded discussions about financial strategies and the politics of wealth. The same was true at other Times Mirror newspapers. "There were several dozen Republicans created," quipped Baltimore Sun metro editor Tony Barbieri, "when they realized how much of that money was going in taxes."

There was not, it might be noted, a lot of gnashing of teeth about the fate of Times Mirror. "I don't see anybody crying about this Tribune merger," said Fran Silverman, the Courant's consumer affairs writer. What's this? A newspaper merger with no fretting about layoffs, corporate micromanagement, the general loss of free expression? Not exactly. "The short-term concern is over stock options," Silverman explained. "The long-term concern is over journalistic integrity."

A few people did see all the money talk as a sign of pollution in the ranks of writers, editors, and artists. "Their heart isn't in this place anymore," said Larry Williams, a features editor and former state capitol bureau chief. "If it were, they'd be thinking about the Courant instead of what this means to their pocketbooks." In columnist Susan Campbell's piece that week, she said of her colleagues, "Pretty soon, you're watching the stock market and caring about things like profit margin, when, in fact, you got into the news business to look with a jaundiced eye at that very kind of thing."

Indeed, the buzz about pensions, benefits, and, mostly, those options, certainly did overwhelm any big-picture journalism questions, at least in the first week or so. Most Courant employees appeared unconcerned about any moral hazard of watching their bottom line. "It's not an evil thing," said Paul Stern, night deputy state editor at the Courant, "that professional journalists who do this to feed their families show a keen interest in their own economic welfare."

Evil or not, for a few days we were a sort of lab experiment in corporate journalism -- an experiment that, according to Courant editor Brian Toolan, brought a normal, healthy response from journalists. "Until about 1992, I never heard the terms 'newspaper' and 'shareholder value' said in the same breath," Toolan said. "Since then it's a Greek chorus." But Toolan does not see stock market concerns as the end of the world, as detracting from the Courant's mission. "To me," he said, "it's more of a curiosity."

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