Word: ratliff
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...defamatory, opprobrious language . . . impugned the motives, actions and conduct of the officers and directors of the newspaper and have otherwise attacked their probity and imputed improper purposes to them . . . you are hereby dismissed." It was signed "Roger Ferger," publisher of the Enquirer. Also fired by Ferger: Columnist James H. Ratliff Jr., who spearheaded the 1952 drive in which Enquirer employees raised the cash to take over their own paper...
Thus, Publisher Ferger hoped to quell the uproar over Enquirer management (TIME, Dec. 5) in which Ratliff had already been dumped as vice president and secretary of the company. But the firings,, only intensified the bitterness. At a meeting later in Cincinnati's Cox Theater, staffers sat in grim silence for 90 minutes while Ferger, 61, denied charges by Ratliff and Cronin that his own salary and bonus (1955 total: $104,699) and those of Assistant Publisher Eugene Duffield ($62,319) were excessive. Moreover, said Ferger, financial backers had urged him to insist on a ten-year contract; while...
This was rebutted at a later meeting of outside stockholders representing shares worth $250,000. Ratliff produced a letter from Halsey, Stuart's President H. L. Stuart saying that 1) "the original request for a voting trust came from Mr. Ferger as a condition of him continuing as publisher," and 2) the stock-option deal was put through "without our knowledge . . . I certainly do question the moral action in devaluing the options which we had through our debentures...
...week's end, a pro-Ferger United Employees' Committee for 'Continued Success & Employee Control, led by Circulation Boss Lawrence Nash, suggested a review of top-management salaries and closer consultation between executives and staffers. Snapped Jim Ratliff: "Their platform is the one I gave my scalp...
...Lynching Bee." Ratliff aired his own accusations at an employee meeting where City Editor Jack Cronin also charged that "the ruthless collusion of unprincipled men" had "betrayed the ideal for which we fought in 1952." Ratliff's chief charges were that : 1 ) board members voted themselves stock options, which, at his insistence, they finally dropped, except for Ferger; 2) Ferger and Assistant Publisher Eugene S. Duffield together paid themselves an estimated $135,000 in a year when the whole company earned a $349,000 profit and paid its stockholders only $78,000 in dividends; 3) Ferger and Duffield negotiated...