Bonus Paid To Media Mogul Rankles Union

Screenshot from LA Times Guild website

A media mogul whose company owns three beleaguered newspapers picked a Christmas quarrel with his newsroom union when he appeared to stuff his own stocking with a $15 million consulting deal.

Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro, whose company owns the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, awarded himself  $15 million in consulting contracts, upsetting the Los Angeles Times newsroom union in the process.

According to an SEC filing, Ferro hired Merrick Media – which is also owned by Ferro – for a deal that pays $15 million over three years to “provide certain management expertise and technical services.”

Fox News reports the deal seems to indicate he is paying himself an additional $5 million per year through 2020, and the Los Angeles Times Guild was not pleased with the news.

It mocked Ferro in a posting to its website. The additional cash “would cover the cost of his sleek Bombardier jet and any other luxury travel he chooses to indulge in,” according to the Guild.

The filing states the annual fee of $5 million will be paid in cash, in advance on the first business day of each calendar year. The deal doesn’t specifically state what Merrick Ventures will actually do.

“It essentially replaces the leasing arrangement in which Tronc paid Ferro’s Merrick Ventures for his own use of the jet. That act of plundering cost Tronc -- and its newsrooms -- $4.6 million between February 2016 and last September,” the Guild wrote.”Ferro is now free to spend nearly twice that amount per year on the jet or anything else he desires. And he won’t have to break out the travel expenses on future SEC filings.”

LATimes News Guild graphic

The Los Angeles Times Guild organizing committee has asked Tronc to allow NewsGuild, the organization that represents our journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the Associated Press, to recognize NewsGuild as its representative.