Ruhe and Geissler Lose Sway as UPI Implodes
As summer 1984 wore on, another Baha’i friend of Ruhe continued to chase payment for enormous consulting fees for an automated accounting system he promised UPI but never delivered. When I joined Kenny and Self urging Ruhe to further [...]
UPI Begins Its Descent into Bankruptcy
In scrambling for cash to meet payrolls, UPI at this time was awash with highly paid consultants. Disadvantaging its growing legion of creditors, Baha’i friends and acquaintances of Ruhe and Geissler increasingly began to propose and execute purchases of [...]
Moving to Nashville as UPI Assistant General Counsel
Ruhe and Geissler had made Linda Neal UPI’s General Counsel after their purchase of UPI. They also had decided to save money by moving UPI’s news headquarters from Manhattan to Washington, D.C., and the company’s corporate headquarters from Scripps’s [...]
UPI—Second Banana to the Associated Press
United Press had been founded in 1907 by E.W. Scripps, the owner of newspapers in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo. The papers covered local news in these cities adequately but were at a disadvantage in covering non-local news. The [...]
Transitioning to United Press International
After I left The Bradford Exchange in 1983, I briefly settled back into the private practice of law. Joining several of my former Roan & Grossman partners as Of Counsel, I worked in a La Salle Street office across [...]
The Aftermath—Harold Washington Defeats Jane Byrne
On Saturday, June 27, just one week after the Tribune laid out the details of the previously shielded transition report, it was left to the Hot Type section of the Chicago Reader to try to pick up the pieces. [...]
Will She or Won’t She?
At first, this was all taken very seriously. Tribune Managing Editor William Jones said in Monday’s Tribune: There is no vendetta and the mayor knows it. The Tribune will continue to publish the news without first seeking approval from [...]
Rally ‘Round the First Amendment
Sunday morning, husband Jay McMullen spoke to Bob Crawford, longtime City Hall correspondent, on WBBM radio. When Crawford raised the question of the mayor being sued and losing, McMullen opined, “At least we will have made our point.” McMullen [...]
“Innuendo, Lies, Smears, Character Assassinations and Male Chauvinist”
The upshot of this frantic deadline mission was that the early editions of the Sunday Tribune that hit the streets Saturday evening had the story blasted over its front page and spilling into multiple inside pages, and the Sun-Times [...]
