“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

— Mohandas Gandhi

Reportedly, eight to 10 people who worked in The Blade’s ad production department received a trick on Halloween; they were laid off as the newspaper consolidated services with its Pittsburgh sister newspaper. One of them posted at Toledo Talk that she had served there 24 years.

I can’t help but wonder how many of those people would still be employed if The Blade’s parent company, Block Communications, wasn’t spending untold thousands of dollars on a frivolous lawsuit against me.

I guess we all have our priorities.

About three weeks ago, Toledo Free Press LLC Publisher Tom Pounds and I received notice that the Blocks were suing each of us. The background for the suit is allegedly a provision in the separation agreement Tom signed when he left The Blade nearly eight years ago, which provided that he would not disparage The Blade or “take any action, directly or indirectly, intended to harm the plaintiff, its parent, division, subsidiaries, or affiliates or any of their directors, officers, shareholders, or employees.”

The Blocks claim Tom has used Toledo Free Press content to breach his agreement, using me as an alter ego or puppet to accomplish the dirty deeds. According to the suit, I am an “instrument and agent” of Tom’s and I am personally liable for “damages” under the agreement Tom signed nearly eight years ago.

I have a nickname for this clear attempt to stifle my First Amendment rights: “Operation Bullsh*t.”

First time for everything

I have never personally been sued before, and probably neither have most of you. As part of this experience, which I am told could last from six months to two years, I am going to share the journey and try to bring transparency to this process of bullying through litigation.

On Oct. 4, the Blocks’ legal team sent a 16-page document to all of us named in the suit: “The Plaintiff’s First Set of Requests f or (sic) Admissions, Interrogatories and Requests for Production of Documents.”

Or PFSORFAIARFPOD for short.

Fun fact: So far, the Blocks have generated 116 printed pages for this suit, not counting envelopes and whatever reams of fallen trees they have zipped through internally.

I have zero working knowledge of the legal system (although that is obviously changing by the day), but it seems to me the PFSORFAIARFPOD is an odd document. The Blocks previously  filled 13 pages explaining why they were suing us, but the PFSORFAIARFPOD consists of 36 requests for information and questions we are supposed to answer to make the case they failed to make. It certainly would be neighborly and friendly of us to help the Blocks build their case.

But we’re not feeling very friendly these days.

The Blocks go fishin’

To my untrained thinking, the PFSORFAIARFPOD is a Block fishing expedition, an attempt to force us to incriminate ourselves.

The very first question in the PFSORFAIARFPOD asks us to admit to the Blocks’ accusations. The second question in the PFSORFAIARFPOD asks us, if question No. 1 is “anything other than an unqualified admission,” to state all the facts that support the response.

In other words, “Answer this: Have you stopped kicking your dog, Mr. Miller?”

The PFSORFAIARFPOD also asks Tom and I to describe our job duties (That’s easy: Tom oversees all financial and circulation aspects of the newspaper, sells ads, serves on nonprofit boards and generally keeps the business running. He also squeezes free as little page space as possible for me to work with, which is the primary reason our business has survived nearly seven years. I run the editorial side of the newspaper and spend Tom’s money on writers, artists, photographers and other unsavory characters). The PFSORFAIARFPOD also asks Tom and me to identify all of our personal email accounts. I am not looking forward to reading what the folks at the Toledo Talk message board have to say about the messages from my humancentipede77@hotmail.com account.

The PFSORFAIARFPOD also requests job duty descriptions for all Toledo Free Press employees. Are you starting to share my suspicion that one of the intentions of the Blocks’ lawsuit is to just bury us in pointless paperwork?

Another item of the Operation Bullsh*t PFSORFAIARFPOD asks for all organizational charts for Toledo Free Press. No such charts exist, but if one did, it would have a box at the top labeled “Tom,” with a branch for me, the salespeople, the administration staff and the circulation crew, with another branch from my box that contains writers, artists, photographers, proofreaders and other unpleasant addicts, reprobates and menaces to society.

The PFSORFAIARFPOD requests “all documents (including notes, drafts, emails, etc.) related to the May 22, 2011 article entitled (sic) “Blade Unions Authorize Strike.” That will be easy, as that will consist of two documents: a letter Toledo Blade Newspaper Guild Administrative Officer Lillian Covarrubias wrote to guild members on May 15 (titled “Blade Outsourcing Plan Shames Blocks”) and a handwritten log of unsuccessful attempts to get a comment from Blade President and General Manager Joe Zerbey.

We have also been asked to “produce all documents (including notes, drafts, emails, etc.) related to the cartoon that appeared on Page A4 of the Aug. 21, 2011 Toledo Free Press.” That cartoon (helpfully republished here as an item of newsworthy evidence in a lawsuit), which criticized The Blade for its hammering of Rave Motion Pictures and Hollywood Casino Toledo, has a very thin paper trail. Having thought up the cartoon in the shower, where I do not take notes, I later called cartoonist Don Lee, outlined what I had in mind, received his email draft, suggested a minor change I do not remember then placed the finished cartoon on the page. Lee might have those emails. I do not.

Concept by Michael S. Miller. Illustration by Don Lee.

The PFSORFAIARFPOD wants “all documents from … any employees of The Blade.” That’s not very trusting of the Blocks. No Blade employees would send us any documents, would they?

The PFSORFAIARFPOD intrusively seeks several items we are not going to produce without a specific court order, including my personnel file. If The Blade ever does get its weakening grasp on my personnel file, there isn’t going to be a lot to discuss, except a 7-year-old resume, ancient receipts for book purchases and the blueprints to the Seneca County Courthouse.

We are supposed to produce the answers to the 36 requests for information within 30 days, but it may take that long to decipher the document’s language. At one point, the PFSORFAIARFPOD takes nearly 250 words to define the word “document.”

And check out this flowing prose: “All uses of the conjunctive herein include the disjunctive and vice versa. Words in the singular include the plural and vice versa. All uses of the feminine gender include the masculine gender and vice versa. All uses of the words ‘and’ or ‘or’ shall be construed to mean ‘and/or’ where the effect is to broaden the requests. All uses of the word ‘all’ shall include ‘any’ and vice versa. All uses of the word ‘each’ shall include ‘every’ and vice versa. The use of a verb in any tense shall be construed as the use of the verb in all tenses.”

If one of the Blocks’ intentions is to keep us immersed in the details of Operation Bullsh*t, well, mission accomplished. Dealing with this has kept me from doing more important work, like sifting through resumes of laid-off Blade employees who might still have jobs if the Blocks had paid more attention to their own house than ours.

And sadly, this is keeping Tom and me from pursuing our next project: starting a new cable TV supplier.

But this exercise in bullying and attempted prior restraint will give us the opportunity to share the stories of true disparagement the plaintiffs have perpetrated by their acts and the acts of the people they control.

And what stories they are …

Michael S. Miller is editor in chief of Toledo Free Press and Toledo Free Press Star. Email him at mmiller@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: censorship, Don Lee, First Amendment, Free Speech, Hollywood Casino Toledo, Lighting The Fuse, Michael S. Miller, prior restraint, Rave Cinemas, The Blade, Toledo Free Press, Tom Pounds

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Lighting The Fuse, Opinion, Uncategorized.
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Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi was killed Oct. 20, but bullying did not die with him.

As the world learned of the dictator’s death, Toledo Free Press learned it was being sued by Block Communications, parent company of The Blade and other relative antiquities. The 13-page complaint contains many allegations, ranging from microscopic to malignant. And in addition to suing Toledo Free Press LLC and its president and publisher, Tom Pounds, they are suing me personally.

The background for the suit is allegedly a provision in the separation agreement Tom signed when he left The Blade nearly eight years ago, which provided that he would not disparage The Blade or “take any action, directly or indirectly, intended to harm the plaintiff, its parent, division, subsidiaries, or affiliates or any of their directors, officers, shareholders, or employees.”

The plaintiff claims that Tom has used Toledo Free Press content to breach his agreement, using me as an alter ego or proxy to accomplish the dirty deeds. According to the suit, I am an “instrument and agent” of Tom’s and I am personally liable for “damages” under the agreement Tom signed nearly eight years ago.

I call “bullsh*t.”

Let’s call this what it is: an arrogant “Hail Mary” attempt to silence my criticism of The Blade and grossly impair my First Amendment rights, while perpetrating as much damage as possible on my employer and business.

Standards and goals

In my 25-year career in journalism, I have stubbornly and with unwavering consistency adhered to some bedrock principles. Opinion pages and news pages must be clearly marked and neither should masquerade as the other. Editorial and advertising concerns should be kept as far apart as possible. Newspapers should hold evil accountable and assist good. I am not claiming to be batting .1000 at all of these ideals, but that’s the standard and goal.

I have separated from two Toledo publications because of ethical chicanery and publisher interference. The road to ethical lapse begins with compromise, so compromise must be held in contempt. When I first met Tom, one January evening in 2005, our primary discussion about the potential of Toledo Free Press focused on our definitions of community journalism and the risk a startup free newspaper represented. Although I knew Tom had worked at The Blade, neither that publication nor its plaintiff owners factored into our conversation. Eventually, as we shaped the focus and intent of Toledo Free Press, we discussed the potential hazard of directly taking on The Blade. Our mutual determination was that a newspaper that based its content solely in opposition to The Blade’s stances would not be attractive to readers or advertisers and certainly offered no challenge or appeal to me.

At no time during our initial conversation, nor at any time in the subsequent nearly seven years did Tom ever discuss or share with me the details of his separation agreement with the plaintiff. I knew he had a noncompete agreement that forbade him from working at a daily newspaper for a period of time, but I had zero knowledge of any non-disparagement clause until I learned about it a half-decade later in one of the plaintiffs’ annual legal threat missives (at least two of which falsely accused me personally of offenses that were stretches or outright lies). I was not a party to Tom’s agreement with the plaintiffs, so my actions cannot breach it.

Initial focus

One of the primary deals I made with Tom was that he would do what he knows best — sales, circulation, business — and I would do what I know best — producing a strong and ethical publication that serves its community instead of demanding service from it. When we launched Toledo Free Press, we were a small-circulation paper put on racks on Wednesdays. Our current 100,000-plus circulation with home delivery was not even in our dreams, much less the business plan. We were focused on making our mark on Toledo’s weekly print scene and focused on those competitors, not the plaintiff’s daily newspaper.

While Tom and I jointly agree on the general direction and tone of Toledo Free Press coverage, he has never interfered with a news story or editorial in these pages. He is not ignorant of our bigger projects, and I do not keep secrets from him, but we do not jointly plan coverage. Tom has never once assigned a story, edited a story, censored a story, demanded changes in a story or tried to force-feed a story through the system. He reads my column on the layout pages at the same time our deadline copy editors do. And while I warn him before I wade into hazardous waters, I have never sought permission to tackle a topic, nor has he demanded that of me.

Does Tom take any pleasure when I criticize the plaintiffs or stand in front of some of their more outrageous attempts to block a building demolition or falsely malign someone like WSPD’s Brian Wilson? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Tom has never given me a bonus for sticking my neck out when it comes to the plaintiffs and he has never indicated any direction other than our shared desire to be honest, accurate and take the high road.

What the plaintiffs are suggesting is not only an outrageous attempt at prior restraint on my free speech rights, it is a clear effort to malign my professional reputation.

Toledo Free Press has been named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Best Weekly Newspaper for three consecutive years and has garnered scores of industry awards for its writing and design (including my three consecutive SPJ awards in the Best Media Criticism category, for three deconstructions of the plaintiffs’ work). To suggest any of that has been accomplished while I was being used as a pawn on a chessboard is to malign my abilities and achievements, a few of which clearly agitate the plaintiffs.

I am Tom’s partner, not his puppet, and there is not one person who has worked for Toledo Free Press who could honestly say otherwise. My guess is that is one of the primary sticking points for the plaintiff; while so many community and business leaders have willingly and by choice allowed themselves to be controlled like marionettes, Tom and I have refused to allow Toledo Free Press to be cowed by the plaintiffs’ threats, backroom arrangements and clear disparagement tactics.

The cartoon in question

Concept by Michael S. Miller. Illustration by Don Lee.

Anyone who doubts this is the plaintiffs’ attempt to silence my criticism should look at paragraph 31 of their lawsuit.

“On or about August 21, 2011, Pounds … permitted Toledo Free Press to publish a cartoon that depicted a characterization of John R. Block and Allan Block together with The Blade as casting an eclipsing shadow on jobs, tax revenue, investment and development in Toledo, Ohio.”

The plaintiffs’ suit describes the cartoon as disparaging and harmful.

That cartoon, reprinted here so you can see what all the fuss is about, did depict the plaintiffs as eclipsing economic development offered by Rave Cinemas and Hollywood Casino Toledo and was inspired by two “news” stories in the plaintiffs’ publication. An Aug. 5 story, “Multiplex experience takes a toll on moviegoers’ wallets,” pilloried Rave for its popcorn and concession prices, using such unattributed descriptions as “the markup is steep” and “high prices.” The article generally cast Rave in a bad light as a greedy corporate entity bilking its customers.

On Aug. 15, The Blade published a a front-page story headlined, “Future casinos spur addiction concerns,” the latest episode in the ongoing Blade campaign of disparaging casinos since the idea was first proposed for the ballot. The combination of the two stories inspired my idea of the plaintiffs eclipsing economic development with their agenda-driven news coverage. I phoned editorial cartoonist Don Lee and commissioned the cartoon. At no point in the process was Tom involved in the discussion, creation or execution of the cartoon.

The publication of the cartoon fairly criticized The Blade’s own coverage and its owners’ published opinions. As public figures at a public entity, the plaintiffs may be fairly criticized. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit  does not deny the accuracy of the cartoon, it just claims that it violates a nearly 8-year-old agreement that was never agreed to by myself or Lee, the cartoon’s creators.

The attempt to silence this criticism should anger anyone who gives a damn about personal free speech and the rights of the press. While The Blade is quick to defend its First Amendment rights, it is telling that it does not extend that defense to others when it is the focus of criticism.

Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt’s right to publish a satirical ad that described the Rev. Jerry Falwell engaging in drunken sexual congress with his mother in an outhouse. It’s unlikely I would commission a similar  satire of the plaintiffs, but the cartoon on this page, which mirrors the plaintiffs’ published work, does not approach even the most thinly stretched definition of harm as they claim.

As Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the majority opinion of the Flynt case, “At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern.

“The sort of robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office or those public figures who are intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large.”

The cost of the fight

Toledo Free Press is a small company. A protracted legal fight endangers its future. But we will fight. The larger issue of free speech is more important than our business or financial concerns.

The one small comfort is that we may finally be able to publicly share the stories of true disparagement the plaintiffs have perpetrated by their acts and the acts of the people they control.

And what stories they are …

Email Editor in Chief Michael S. Miller at mmiller@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: censorship, Don Lee, First Amendment, Free Speech, Hollywood Casino Toledo, Lighting The Fuse, Michael S. Miller, prior restraint, Rave Cinemas, The Blade, Toledo Free Press, Tom Pounds

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Lighting The Fuse, Opinion.
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While the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights should be cherished by all Americans (and any society that wishes to emulate our freedoms), the First Amendment is particularly important for people in journalism: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

As the Occupy Wall Street movement challenges the laws and ordinances of communities great and small, and as Toledo Free Press faces its own challenges to its freedoms, the First Amendment has a prominent place in my thoughts.

I am not a journalist. I use this space to comment on issues I feel are relevant to the business community and our region as a whole, but I am first and foremost a business owner concerned with providing what I believe is a valuable service to the community — while trying to make a living.

When I founded Toledo Free Press LLC in 2004, I knew I wanted to establish a newspaper that focused on community journalism — which I define as stories that focus on people and events not always featured in mainstream media. I wanted to establish a “glass half-full” approach; I wanted to help the community improve and grow, to draw new people and retain its current residents by showcasing the better elements of living here. I know that criticism and commentary are a part of that puzzle, but I do not claim to have insight into creating those knowledge streams. I wanted to provide a vehicle, but I needed someone to help me design it, build it and drive it.

A number of editors I spoke to turned down the opportunity. After a few early 2005 meetings with Michael Miller, who at the time was news editor of The Daily Telegram in Adrian, I believed I had found someone who understood the greater mission.

From the beginning, Michael and I agreed that we needed to collaborate on the business but that I would not dictate editorial content or his commentary. I have kept that promise and here we are nearly seven years later, having just won our third consecutive Ohio Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) award for Best Weekly Newspaper in Ohio. We have earned some great distinctions in our short history, and I know we could not have done this without Michael and his team, just as they know they could not make their visions a reality without the sales, administration and publishing elements of the newspaper.

I am not a journalist, but journalism is the field that supports my family. I understand the importance of the First Amendment, now more than ever.

Toledo Free Press will fight for its free speech rights, which means we are fighting for your free speech rights. Any compromise for freedom of the press is a loss for the entire community.

Even a short-term bow to censorship threatens the success of the long run — in a race that has no finish line.

As we thank SPJ for the recognition and continue with our work, we remain grateful for your support and look forward to serving you for many, many years to come.

Thomas F. Pounds is president and publisher of Toledo Free Press and Toledo Free Press Star. Contact him at tpounds@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: censorship, First Amendment, Free Speech, prior restraint, Publisher's Statement, Toledo Free Press, Tom Pounds

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, Publisher's Statement.
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