Recognise this happy chap above? No, well like the Lee Marvin character, Walker, in the iconic John Boorman daylight noir film, 'Point Blank', I'm a great believer in the theory that if you go far enough up the chain in an organisation, you always find the one man who makes all the decisions.
The man in the photograph is Craig A. Dubow, no not the one with the gun, that's Lee Marvin. Craigie boy sits at the top of the corporate chain and is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gannett Company Incorporated of America. He makes all the decisions.
Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the USA, operating some 90 daily newspapers and 23 television channels, including the tabloid 'USA Today'. The company was founded by former Republican presidential candidate Frank Gannett, whose family arrived in the USA via Dorset, the Netherlands and Scotland.
In the UK they operate under a subsidiary called Newsquest, owning and running 17 daily and 300 weekly newspapers, including the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times. It could be said that as the man at the top of the chain, Mr Dubow's decisions and deliberations directly impact on the news that these 'Scottish' papers deliver.
It is claimed that Newsquest executives are so cowed by Gannett, that not only do they have to raise their hands when nature calls, but they also have to submit a lengthy cost benefit analysis, breaking down the gross cost of their ablutions and what impact such bowel evacuations might have on the Gannett share price...
Some of you may remember Pete Wishart of the SNP in 2007 alleged that Newsquest had mislead the Competitions Commission as to their intent regarding jobs and err standards, when they paid SMG £216 million for the three titles in 2003. Subsequent strikes, redundancies and dramatic collapse in the quality of reporting may have proved Mr Wishart as being not too far off the mark in his assumptions.
After the Sunday Herald's excruciating mea maxima culpa regarding inferences by Ms Go Lassie Go , Mandy Rhodes at Holyrood magazine and The Drum magazine that their relationship with lawyers Levy and MacRae was a conflict of interest in the reporting of the Steven Purcell cocaine story, one can't help wondering if the Newsquest executives are starting to check the exit strategies. Herald editor Donald Martin's decision to leave Glasgow for the bright lights of Dundee and the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Sunday Post, this was a career move that allegedly caused spontaneous outbursts of joyful applause and whoops in the Herald building.
The news today that Newsquest chief executive Paul Davidson dumped 16,250 of his Gannett shares on the market, netting a tidy $200,000 profit may be causing further ruffles, particularly as 16,250 is the maximum he's allowed to sell under US Security and Exchange commission rules. These shares are his reward for seeing the Newsquest group shed 23% of their workforce to a mere 5,100. Has he seen the writing on the wall?
Mr Dubow, the man at the top of the chain has been rewarded nicely too, bringing home an estimated $8 million last year after seeing sales decline by 22% and the workforce decimated by some 6,000. He garnered snorts of derision when he announced in 2008 he was taking a cut in salary from $7.5 million to $7.3 million. The poor man.
A dedicated blog which chronicles every twist and duplicitous turn by Gannett and Newsquest executives makes for excellent reading and is a great foreshadow of what probably awaits journalists at the group. It shines a bright light into the murkiest corners of the old Herald group who have managed to drag the good name of good old fashioned Scottish journalism through the mud.
Mr Dubow can thank his lucky stars that he doesn't owe Lee Marvin's 'Walker' any money.
How soon before Mr Purcell's £5000-a-day crisis management team manage to sell his 'exclusive', 'How the Evil CyberNats Turned Me Into A Cokehead.' story to one of the Scottish tabloids?
The same tabloids that have been ever so reluctant to dump all over Mr Purcell and the Labour Party this past week. An 'Exclusive' wherein, we will no doubt encounter a chastened, refreshed and tearful Mr Purcell pouring his heart out over his anguished torment, his loss of power, his fair weather friends, his search for love, his take on the many personalities, politicians and criminals he's encountered and his view of the modernised Scotland he was destined to lead away from the vile yoke of separatism.
Naturally should such an event occur, then those same tabloids who dithered, obfuscated and minimised the story, when Mr Purcell's resignation as Glasgow City Council leader first broke, will be first up to splash the wonga in Mr Purcell's direction, through his PR team, naturally. That would be the same PR team that has a huge influence on the stories the tabloids love to brand as 'Exclusive'. There's nary an 'Auld Firm' story that doesn't have their size 11 predator boots stamped all over it. The access and influence such people have over the 'power of the press' is quite simply wrong. A newspaper industry dependent on parasites, who control their stories and screw them out of substantial sums has lost direction.
As to Mr Purcell's fondness for the Bolivian marching powder, well, as Glasgow, indeed Scotland is blighted by a drugs epidemic, where an unimaginable amount of money is spent educating our youngsters on the dangers of drugs, where our police spend the majority of their time fighting the criminal effects of drug dealing, the NHS mop up the mess left by drug consumption, (how much out of their £11 billion budget goes on coping with the aftermath of drug abuse?) all I can say is congratulations Labour and their drinking and dining buddies in the Scottish press for keeping this story out of the public domain. Your silence has allowed the man who would be King to run a £2.4 billion budget, four-days-a-week, to the best of his ability as a functioning addict..
Remember behind every gram of coke lies a trail of misery, controlled every step of the way by criminals. Mr Purcell, snorting a couple of lines at the opening of some new fancy hairdressers salon in Drumchuckie, leads all the way back through the hard men gangsters in Glasgow's East End, via corrupt cops, customs officials, venal financiers, drug barons, to dirt poor bastards in hot climates scraping a living at the business end of a gun. Where do the profits end up? Well let's look at security companies, taxi companies, tanning salons, nightclubs and bars. Where 'special' clientèle can snort to their hearts content, safe in the knowledge, that if anyone kicks up a fuss, somewhere along the line, a cop, solicitor or politician has their back.
This story has set back all the good work previous Labour politicians and policies have done in fighting drugs. How can Labour councillors, MSP's and MP's stand up now and pontificate on the dangers of drugs, knowing that they have protected and promoted one of their own, who was at the very centre of Scotland's drugs problem? This is a problem that will be with us for years to come.
It appears that the Media House attempts to control the Steven Purcell story is in danger of blowing a tyre and plummeting down the ravine labelled 'No Chuffing Chance'.
For the first time in living memory the Hootsman actually defied convention, alleged threats of legal nastiness and reported yer actual bona fide-oops-Labour-in-the-shitter-news. News, which I hasten to add that the blogosphere has been voraciously whispering les gros mots about, behind cupped palms, since Monday evening, that Mr Purcell's stress, has been attributable to an alleged pharmaceutical dependency.
Jack Irvine's task was made even more Herculean when STV reported today that Mr Purcell went AWOL from Castle Craig Rehab centre on Sunday afternoon and told their gobsmacked audience that our dear chums at Lothian and Border were called in to poke about the bushes looking for a rather lost, bewildered and somewhat dis-inhibited Mr Purcell. If Castle Craig were a psychiatric institution, rather than a 12 step addiction centre, most patients would have been sectioned under the mental health act, and there would be no need to call police for a patient, unless of course when there is a significant danger of self harm.
As much sympathy as I have for any poor soul dependent on medication, legal or otherwise, to get through the day, I honestly feel, the time-line to Mr Purcell's implosion needs further investigation from our doughty press pack.
Just exactly was said at Gordon Brown's table to Mr Purcell at last Thursday's Labour fund-raising dinner at the Glasgow Hilton, when according to all the impartial Labour supporters and Rangers manager Walter Smith, who were in attendance, that Mr Purcell was 'at the top of his game'? What was it that made him, a few short hours later, express a desire to get the flip out of Dodge? Were the raffle tickets so eye blisteringly expensive that Mr Purcell, according to Paul Hutcheon, had to be 'escorted' home? Who were the MSP's with whom he had 'convivial' talks on the Friday morning? Did they not notice anything untoward in his presumably agitated state? Is Mr Purcell paying for Media House representation, and Levy &McRae defamation specialists from his own pocket or could it be that the Labour Party or friends of the Labour Party are dipping into their own deep pockets? Who overruled the rather expensively assembled 'Team Glasgow' who wanted to come clean and fess all? How long has Mr Purcell, suffered from this alleged dependency, did he ever self medicate in the Council Chambers or whilst on Council business? Does Glasgow City Council have a mandatory drug testing system for its employees, does this apply to elected members or merely officers and other lower paid employees? Where exactly did Mr Purcell procure the pharmaceutical in question?
One presumes, with a desperate desire to be truthful and transparent, that the new leader of Glasgow City Council will immediately instigate an investigation into these and sundry other questions of nefarious goings on at the City Chambers.
Naturally, in a normal independent country, a free press would be asking these questions rather than swallowing the cheap party line of praising some chap down on his hunkers and predicting his meteoric return a few weeks after defeating his inner demons.
Come on the press pack, you can pursue other people with great vim, gusto and template cut and paste reporting, how about doing some actual digging and living up to the once exalted title of 'journalist'?
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