• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, October 13, 2010

The Tribune Co. just can't stop hogging the spotlight. Scarcely a day after the beleaguered newspaper publisher reached a deal with creditors to end its tortuous bankruptcy, chief innovation officer Lee Abrams has been suspended for sending an inappropriate email to staffers. Tribune CEO Randy Michaels announced the decision in a memo to employees on Wednesday morning.

In the email, Abrams included a link to a video clip, which he titled "Sluts" from comedy news publisher the Onion, with a parody report about the crash of a VH1 reality TV bus resulting in the spilling of "more than 2,000 pounds of slut." The video included shots of a woman pouring a bottle of wine over her naked breasts.

Abrams apologized after Chicago Tribune editor Gerould Kern and a number of other Tribune staffers complained to human resources about the inappropriate nature of the email. Apparently, Abrams sent the email to illustrate the kind of news reporting that Tribune should not be doing.

In his memo to employees, Michaels wrote: "Lee recognizes that the video was in extremely bad taste and that it offended employees. But, this is the kind of serious mistake that can't be tolerated; we intend to address it promptly and forcefully."

The email was poorly timed, coming not long after a scathing article by The New York Times' media columnist David Carr in which Tribune employees complained about the "frat house" antics of the senior management team, assembled by Sam Zell following his ill-fated takeover in October 2007. Zell himself gained some early notoriety for saying "fuck you" to one reporter during a newsroom conference at the Orlando Sentinel in January 2008.

Indeed, the brazenly inappropriate nature of the email and the bizarre justification offered by Abrams after the fact serve to highlight the gulf between Tribune's management and employees. These differences have become glaringly obvious in a number of areas, but especially in management's aggressive blurring of the line between advertising and editorial content, which has raised a number of protests from reporters and editors. 

The divide has been particularly public at the Los Angeles Times. In 2009, the LAT took heat for allowing an ad resembling an article on the front cover of the newspaper. The ad, for NBC's new LA police drama "Southland," was run over the objections of Editor Russ Stanton and a dozen other senior editors. In an interview with TheWrap, LAT Executive Editor John Arthur called the front-page ad "horrible," "unfortunate" and "a mistake."

In March of this year, the LAT allowed an eye-catching cover wrap to promote Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. The wrap featured Depp's character's face, superimposed on what appears to be the front page of the newspaper -- but was actually a fake. LAT Editor Russ Stanton and other editors protested the ad, but were overruled by the business side of the LAT.

This summer the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors sent an open letter to the Tribune CEO chastising the company and asking that it cease publishing ads on the cover of the Los Angeles Times intended to look like editorial content.

Meanwhile, in April 2009, 55 reporters and editors at the flagship Chicago Tribune signed an email to editor Gerould Kern and Managing Editor Jane Hirt accusing the paper's marketing department of surveying subscribers about unfinished stories to gauge their reaction -- seemingly laying the groundwork for deciding which articles will be published based on market sentiment. The newspaper later disavowed any such plans.