Stephen A. Smith May Be Headed Back To The Inquirer
The deadline is almost here for the Inquirer to either offer the (unarguably) loudest mouth and (arguably) worst newspaper columnist in this history of this city his job back.
After becoming an ESPN personality a few years ago, Stephen A. Smith’s print column was taken away from him by the Inquirer brass because they did not want to pay him anymore. When Smith returned to the newspaper to write his column as was contractually his right to do while continuing his act on ESPN, the Inquirer told him he was no longer wanted as a columnist.
Smith was offered a gig as a general assignment sports reporter but turned down what was considered a demotion.
However, it looks as if Smith will be returning to the paper sometime this month as a deadline is here that would have him be fully reinstated by the Inquirer as a columnist plus receive all back pay.
The Guild Reporter, a national publication of the Newspaper Guild, gave this account on September 4th of the ruling by arbitrator Richard R. Kasher:
Smith, a columnist with an unblemished disciplinary record for 13 years, was regarded so highly by the Inquirer that he became its best-paid staffer and was featured in its advertising campaigns. Eventually he became a sought-after radio and television commentator, and when ESPN offered him a daily show in 2005, he approached management to negotiate an arrangement allowing him to continue his column on a more limited basis.
The result was an agreement, signed by Anne Gordon, the Inquirer’s managing editor, and Amanda Bennett, the executive editor, stipulating that Smith would write a minimum of 75 columns a year for an annual salary of $125,000. The arrangement was to run for one year, until February of 2006, at which time Smith had the option of resigning, of extending the agreement — or of returning as a full-time columnist, at a salary of $190,000. Moreover, if he returned as a full-time employee would receive a salary increase to $205,000 that June and to $225,000 in June of 2007.
But that was before the roof caved in on the newspaper industry. Bennett was out and William Marimow was in, as the editor responsible ‘for overall news coverage,’ when the Inquirer began the first in a series of newsroom layoffs in January, 2007. When Gordon told him a few months later that it was time to give Smith — who by that time was back on a full-time basis — a $20,000 raise, he was nonplused.”
‘At the time that Anne [Ms. Gordon] told me we had to give Stephen a raise and I looked at the contract, I said to myself — I hadn’t really known how much he was paid. And I said boy, we should really be getting better work,” Marimow testified in the arbitration hearing, held April 24 and May 14 this year. Under cross-examination, he further explained: “I thought that it would be wrong to give a raise of that magnitude after all these layoffs, and I didn’t want to do it because of the trauma that the newsroom had experienced.”
Company witnesses maintained that Smith was simply ‘reassigned’ in August, 2007, and denied that being bumped from a position as a featured columnist to a general assignment reporter was a demotion. Yet Marimow — described by the arbitrator as ‘extraordinarily candid, credible and fair-minded’ — conceded that Smith’s reassignment was a demotion. And as the arbitrator added, Marimow’s testimony persuaded him that Smith’s subsequent treatment was ‘motivated, at least in part if not substantial part, because Mr. Marimow believed that Mr. Smith was being overpaid.’
Now the two sides have two months in which to negotiate whether Smith will regain his coveted columnist’s slot, how much he should be paid — and how much back pay he’s due. And that latter sum could be quite a bundle.
With those two months come and gone. It looks as if Mr. Smith may be headed back to the Inquirer as a columnist very soon.
No!
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