Richard Delevan sacked from The Sunday Tribune
Monday, November 5th, 2007As Damien has already pointed out, Richard Delevan has been sacked from his post at The Sunday Tribune, where he had been Business Editor for some time.
The alleged reason for the sacking centres around an article Delevan wrote for yesterday’s Tribune, where he highlighted the case of a property auctioneer who could not sell his home. Apparently Ken MacDonald, of Hooke & MacDonald, took issue with Delevan’s work and the Tribune’s bosses agreed.
MacDonald’s intriguing dilemma was first highlighted by A Random Walk, although tellingly their treatment of the issue is no longer available.
The timing of Delevan’s forced departure is far from perfect for him, if ever such a time exists, and perhaps the complaint following the MacDonald article was seen internally as the last straw.
Delevan is currently the “star” of another Phoenix article, this time focusing on accusations of bullying made by Ken Griffin. Griffin moved earlier this year to The Tribune from The Sunday Business Post where he had worked as a Sub-Editor and Journalist for somewhere in the region of two years.
The article in Phoenix states that Griffin had to be given an office separate to Delevan due to the situation and that the newspaper had brought in an external bullying expert to investigate the claims made. He was to report his findings in the near future.
As with most articles in Phoenix, it is completely unattributed and without quotes so knowing the source of this leak is next to impossible. If Griffin had been moved as a result of clashes with Delevan then it can be certain that many in the office knew there was something going on, however rumours are abound that the leak actually came from a senior figure in the newspaper rather than another journalist. If this is the case it is clear that Delevan, who has amassed a reputation for being abrasive and to-the-point, had failed to endeared himself to some in important positions and as such the writing for today’s turn of events may well have been on the wall for some time.
What is perhaps most interesting about the Phoenix article, which naturally would have been written before the sacking, is its reference to a possible move by Delevan to the position of Online Editor at the Tribune. Delevan is well known for his progressive outlook in terms of online content and has been critical of The Tribune’s website on many occasions - it is likely that he expressed this view to management too and urged them to fix it on many occasions.
If it is to be believed that the Phoenix article was a leak from a senior figure in the newspaper, this reference becomes far more important than the throw-away line given to it would suggest. Was this someone holding out some bait to encourage Delevan to start playing nice and toeing the company line or was it a taunt made to imply that he was about to be gifted the job but the damage done by the alleged bullying had cost him it?
We’ll likely never know now.
(Disclosure: Ken Griffin was working in The Sunday Business Post at the same time that I was doing regular shift-work there. He and I worked together on two occasions on features for the newspaper - one of which was on the CAO and another on environmentally friendly businesses. I have only spoken to Griffin once since then - in relation to one of these two articles - and Griffin has not been contacted by myself in relation to this issue, nor has he been in contact with me.)
Blogs elsewhere
November 5th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
[…] Business Section for a while but was gone long before Brian left and Richard arrived. Adam has a good post and more on the Phoenix stuff that I knew nothing about. Could last Sunday’s […]
November 6th, 2007 at 1:37 am
article appears to have gone from the tribune site, but all it is not lost.
http://dansullivan.blogspot.com/2007/11/firing-offense.html
November 6th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Still seems to be there for me - the link in the article not work for you?
November 6th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
MacDonald’s intriguing dilemma was first highlighted by A Random Walk, although tellingly their treatment of the issue is no longer available.
Adam, please explain what you mean by “tellingly”. What does it tell you? That A Random Walk was telling fibs? There is no doubt, as far as I can see, that what Richard wrote, based on the ARW post and the Property Pin info, is true. Could it not be that ARW was so utterly shocked at being implicated in the sacking of someone else, especially such a high profile person, that they want to stop it causing further damage. It remain clear to me that ARW is not in any way responsible for this turn of events. But, like many bloggers, having no other power then the cogency of their opinions, he/she baulked when faced with the significantly greater power and resources of a national newspaper.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Adam, please explain what you mean by “tellingly”. What does it tell you?
I’d be happy to.
It has not been confirmed that this article led to Delevan’s sacking but it is the rumoured reason; the fact that ARW pulled their copy would add to this rumour as it would suggest that ARW were contacted by Hooke and MacDonald and “encouraged” to take the article down.
As you point out bloggers are rarely in a position to stand by contentious articles even if they know what they’ve written to be true.
If H&MacD contacted a blog to complain then they certainly contacted a national newspaper too.
From reading ARW since then it seems they pulled the article voluntarily - however it’s likely most of their motivation came from the potential problems leaving it up would cause, especially if H&MacD were aggrieved enough to make it such an issue with a national newspaper.
You seem to assume that I’m accusing ARW of lying - I’m not. There’s nothing I see to suggest that the article is untrue and as a journalist who is well acquainted with the nature of blogs I would be surprised if Delevan were naive enough to pick up and run with a story from a blog without researching it for himself first.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
[…] that Richard was having trouble at the Tribune anyway. According to the most recent edition of Phoenix he was facing a charge of bullying a colleague, Ken Griffin, which was due to be independently […]
November 6th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I do wonder what this says about the partiality of the Tribune after all if they will buckle this quick when faced with an estate agent what would they do when the government gets tetchy with them?
November 6th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
The consensus seems to be that this article was either “the final straw” or a convenient excuse.
It would be an extremely bad precedent for Tribune journalists if this was the only reason for his sacking.
November 6th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Pardon my tetchiness this morning. I suppose I interpreted the use of the word ‘tellingly’ as suggesting that ARW didn’t feel confident in the truth of what was being said to stand by the story. I wasn’t suggesting that you thought he was lying. It never occurred to me that someone from H&MacD would contact him. I still don’t think that was the case. Of course, there must be more to this than the article, but from the outside, and that’s the only perspective I have, it looks bad for the Tribune to appear to be reacting so severely against one of their journalists at the behest of an advertiser.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:02 am
[…] Richard Delevan sacked from The Sunday Tribune […]