Delevan dubbed a 'dead man walking' prior to Tribune dismissal
The sacking of Richard Delevan as Sunday Tribune business editor after an article offended an important property advertiser raises questions about the paper's traditional standing on the high moral ground.
And the fact that the journalist was fired not by the newspaper's editor but by the company's managing director indicates a breakdown in the traditional authority held by editors over editorial content and personnel.
Delevan was fired after the publication of the 4 November Tribune business supplement, for which he was responsible, published a short, unsigned article stating that leading property executive Ken MacDonald, of Hooke & MacDonald auctioneers (“a man who can't be accused of talking down the property market”), had been trying for 13 months to sell his own Blackrock bungalow.
As the Sunday Times has reported, the article prompted an email from MacDonald to Tribune managing director Michael Roche: MacDonald wrote of his “loyalty” to the Tribune and fumed that the paper did not “value or respect the relationship”. On Monday morning, 5 November, Roche called Delevan into his office and told him to clear his desk.
Editor Nóirín Hegarty was not in the building, a normal absence for a Sunday newspaper editor on a quiet Monday morning. She had been on leave the previous week, so was also out of the office on the Friday evening when the offending article was sent for publication. (The article had raised some newsroom concerns, but Delevan approved
it to run.)
The precipitous firing of a journalist for publishing an accurate and pertinent article – a sacking carried out by the MD who had come under direct pressure from an advertiser – has prompted little comment. (Business columnist Bill Tyson did resign from the Tribune in protest.)
The deafening silence has something to do with the bitchy, begrudging culture of journalism, where solidarity is unusual, and colleagues were ready to adopt Hegarty's public comment that the case was “more complex”. (Hegarty did not reply to Village's voicemail request for interview.) The silence also relates to an unsavoury fact of journalistic life: advertisers pay the bills and wield increasing influence in a tightening market, through commercial rather than editorial channels.
Furthermore, the report of Delevan's sacking in the Irish Times said the controversial article was “based on contributions to an anonymous blog”. In fact, Tribune journalists independently verified all the facts, but – unlike many journalistic web-scavengers – acknowledged in print that they had first seen the story online. The link with “an anonymous blog” was unlikely to arouse high-minded sympathy.
The silence also, it is fair to say, has something to do with Delevan himself. A fine writer and explainer of complex issues, he is also a brash, prickly New Yorker. (This writer has gone up against him in debate, on radio and TV, and it can be hard going. However, we enjoy a friendly relationship.) Delevan's visible struggles inside the paper had already seen him dubbed a “dead man walking”. He was expected to be moved sideways to run the newspaper's website, itself a mess he was well qualified to sort out. However, it is understood the timing and nature of his firing took everyone by surprise.
The shadow over Delevan related in part to a formal bullying case brought against him by a young reporter several months ago. By November an investigation had taken place and colleagues did not expect Delevan to be disciplined. But a succession of articles this autumn in Phoenix magazine ventilated that charge and drew attention to a sharply worded email Delevan had sent to various public-relations people. (Delevan is himself an ex-PR man.)
The Phoenix stories referred to Delevan as an “American neo-con”. In reality, while he supported the Iraq war, his opinion columns in recent years show him souring on it, while his online blog features his 2006 Tribune endorsement of, and subsequent praise for, liberal Democrat Barack Obama. The magazine's repeated caricature of Delevan – his self-mocking comparison of himself to John Wayne got frequent outings – was seen by colleagues, who suspected the Phoenix material came from inside the paper, as indicating the weakening of his position.
The story that finished him off was typical in one sense: business coverage under Delevan was no cheerleader for Irish business interests, and highlighted the differences between rhetoric and reality. Delevan told Village he was constrained for legal reasons from discussing his sacking, but admitted his editorial approach was “deliberately controversial”. He was, he said, “not interested in the shallow, personality-based coverage that drives a lot of Irish business journalism”.
With a small, young staff, he decided to concentrate on issues that other people weren't addressing – like why Ireland is host to an incredible one-third of the world's hedge funds. Since March, well ahead of the competition, the Tribune has had arguably the best news and analysis of the unravelling of global credit markets and the part played in that debacle by Ireland's “light touch” regime of financial and stock-exchange regulation.
Like his early championing of businesses' role in fighting climate change, it was prescient. But it was not an approach designed to make friends. Among bankers and brokers it was suggested, he was told, that such stories were damaging the “national interest” – damaging talk in a small, cosy media culture like Ireland's.
However, he insisted to Village, “a journalist asking questions is not exhibiting disloyalty”.