One says, "Water is cold!" The other then says, "Deep, too."
Posted on 01/10/2005 2:35:27 PM PST by Pikamax
Metro-Racism
By Rory O'Connor Mediachannel.org, Media is a Plural
When The New York Times Company, owner of The Boston Globe, recently announced it would buy a 49 percent stake in Boston Metro (see the addendum below), the free newspaper distributed to commuters, did it know it was also buying into a corporate culture of crude racism?
NEW YORK, January 10, 2005 -- On April 4 through 6, 2003, officials of the Metro International newspaper chain held a sales conference near Rome. Top executives of all the nearly two dozen Metro newspapers were there -- the Managing Directors (i.e. publishers), along with sales directors, editors and others. The annual corporate event, complete with lavish food, open bar and costly entertainment, is meant to celebrate sales and motivate managers for the next year.
At the Saturday night gala dinner, tradition has it that someone at each table sing a song or tell a joke before dessert, as a means of breaking the ice and helping everyone bond.
"Each table identified its top talent," one attendee remembered recently. "The idea was to provide a little entertainment."
But according to several former Metro executives who were at the gala, the festivities turned suddenly and shockingly sour when Steve Nylundh, the global newspaper chain's leading North America executive, took his turn. John Wilpers, then- editor of Boston Metro, explains.
"There were fifteen or twenty tables," Wilpers recalls. "Each had put together a little presentation, and Nylund was chosen to represent his."
"I will tell a joke," Nylund announced from the front of the room.
Nylund's "joke" came in the form of a toast that centered on the length of the sexual organs of black males, whom he referred to as "niggers."
"It concerned the depth of a pool of water and the length of their penises," Wilpers says.
"Nylund began by saying, 'There were two niggers standing by a pool, and they took their dicks out,'" another participant recalls. "He went on about how one said the pool was too cold, and the other said it was too deep. I wanted to crawl under the table."
"All the Americans and the southern Europeans gasped," says Wilpers. "Someone at my table said, 'I can't believe he said that!' But the Nordics all laughed."
Wilpers says such crudely racist 'humor' was common at Metro when he worked there -- but usually not in public. "There were often jokes made in private by the northern Europeans. The corporate culture encouraged it. The company is run by people who are racist and ugly."
Other former Metro executives who attended the gala echo Wilpers' assessment. "I was sitting at a table with the Czechs and Hungarians," one told me. "I was shocked at what I heard. Quiet just fell over the entire room. No one knew what to say."
"I fell off my chair," another said. "The mentality there is shocking."
"When I left, I asked some of the Europeans if it had been as shocking to them as to us Americans," one attendee told me. "They said, 'Absolutely!'
"It's bizarre and unbelievable," he concluded. "The people who run Metro are NOT stupid-you would think that even if they were that racist they wouldn't say it in public!"
Incredibly, the racist joking did not end at the dinner near Rome. A few months later, a similar incident took place at a dinner the Metro chain held on August 29th at a Hilton hotel in Stockholm. Once again the affair was attended by top Metro executives, along with others from television stations and networks owned by the Kinnevik Corporation, the multi-billion-dollar holding company behind the Metro Group.
Hans-Holger Albrecht, a member of Metro Newspapers Board of Directors, as well as President and CEO of Modern Times Group, the former corporate parent of Metro, was Master of Ceremonies for the gala evening. Perhaps in reference to Nylund's joke a few months earlier in Rome, Albrecht began the festivities by saying "Good evening, Ladies, Gentlemen and Niggers."
Cristina Stenbeck, heir to Kinnevik founder Jan Stenbeck and a member of the Metro Board of Directors, was in attendance at both functions -- at Rome she sat at the table directly next to Nylundh's -- but had no negative reaction.
"Cristina was there and did nothing," one former Metro executive recalls. "The next day, however, the CEO did make a joke about Steve's 'affirmative action' program."
The shocking dinner 'humor' is only one indication of an apparently crude corporate culture of racism and discrimination at the Metro chain. Other employees at Boston Metro have formally charged the corporation with racist practices, and filed complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. C. C. Lee, a former sales representative, charged he was the victim of a 'racially motivated' salary cutback, and told me "the culture of the company" is racist.
"Racism is always an element," Lee says. "They made racist innuendo, and comments like 'Blacks smoke crack.' That's their corporate culture."
Other employees also complain that Metro is sexist as well as racist. One woman said the company was "male-dominated" and that it was difficult for women to "go anywhere in the company" -- it's only men, and mostly white." She also told of an advertisement that was turned down by Philadelphia Metro because "the paper did not want it to look like its readers needed food stamps" and didn't want to send "the wrong message' to its advertisers." Instead, she said, "the paper wanted its readers to appear young, professional, upwardly mobile and white collar."
No one at either the Metro Group or New York Times denies the story.
When I first contacted Ken Frydman, the press representative for the Metro Newspapers, for comment, he immediately told me, "Don't expect to get a response" to my questions about the events described above. Frydman's instinct proved correct. After asking more than a dozen specific questions, I was told only that "No one is going to be available to talk to you on that story."
Executives at Metro's new partner, The New York Times Company, which just paid $16.5 million in exchange for a 49 percent stake in Boston Metro, proved no more forthcoming. In response to requests to interview Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. or Boston Globe publisher Richard Gilman about the allegations of Metro-racism, Company spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said only that "Ken is the right person to deal with this."
The Times purchase is a first foray for the Company into free distribution dailies such as Metro -- a growing trend in an industry seeking to reach new, younger audiences. Metropolitan newspapers in several markets, including Chicago, Washington, and Dallas, have launched free papers similar to the tabloid Metro, which target young readers with short news stories and lots of arts, entertainment, and lifestyle features.
Metro, launched in Boston in 2001 and now profitable, distributes about 180,000 papers a day, reaching an estimated 300,000 readers. The goal of the joint venture with the Times Company is to open new markets, attract new readers and advertisers, and provide a vehicle for cross promotions.
Metro Boston is one of five free papers published in North America by Metro USA Inc., a subsidiary of Metro International SA, a publicly traded company founded in Stockholm in 1995. Along with Philadelphia, New York, Toronto, and Montreal, Metro papers reach some 14.5 million readers a day in 17 countries, according to the company.
Metro's partnership with the Globe is the company's second joint venture with a metropolitan newspaper. The other is with the Toronto Star in Canada, said Steve R. Nylund, president of Metro USA. Metro also has a joint venture with a French television station and a Montreal magazine publisher.
given i live in boston and pick it up because there is nothing to read while going to work, this is hilarious! the metro is hardy a paper, its more like a lot of ads, color pictures and AP reports. Even funnier when you consider the little content they write like the gay marriage stuff they advocate makes the ny times look like the washington times :-p
One says, "Water is cold!" The other then says, "Deep, too."
"i live in boston and pick it up because there is nothing to read while going to work,"
I work in Jersey City and we actually get the NY Metro out here, I've read it too. You are right, it is basically a nothing paper, it is so cut and paste and fake, it almost seems like a not-funny Onion. I KNEW there was something wrong with it; now I know, it's put out by a bunch of racist Scandos, who are no doubt as liberal as they come.
LOL, another great move on the part of Pinch Schulzberger and Co. You go boy! Keep this stuff up and you'll have the old gray whore out of business in my lifetime. I pray to God I live to see the day.
As an Anglo-American (don't call us "whites" or "caucs"), I believe I am offended.
As a honky, I find you wanting to be hyphenated , funnier than the joke.
I believe I speak for all Hyphenated-Americans (don't believe the hyph).
Once more some Euros let the mask drop.
They are, in general, far more racist than us Ameicans.
'There were two "people of color" standing by a pool,
Wonder if that would have been PC?
Are you supposed to respect an individual more because the individual claims to be hyphenated?
If not why bother, it's totally meaningless.
I respect regular Americans, and wonder why you choose not to speak for regular Americans.
I respect regular Americans, and wonder why you choose not to speak for regular Americans.
By not respecting Hyphenated-Americans (H-A's), you are again showcasing your ignorance. All I can say is H-A H-A. (it's a joke, I'm kidding, get over it).
But I do think that the term Anglo-American has a future.
bump
I can die happy when the slimes go under.
Telling the joke in such company was purely stupid. However, except for the "N" word, I found the joke hilarious! Wouldn't it be complimentary to a black person? I know that in terms of race overgeneralizations, there are much worse!
Here is an old report from Accuracy In Media. Which is the more obscene?
HOW THE ‘POST’ DOCTORS THE NEWS
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
August 16, 2000
There is a national controversy over the Boston Globe’s suspension of a conservative columnist for using historical material that had appeared elsewhere. At best, as John Fund of the Wall Street Journal puts it, the case is a misdemeanor. But we’ve got a case for you that falls into the category of journalistic felony. The Washington Post has been caught altering a quotation from a crime victim in order to conceal a hate crime that was committed against a white boy.
The story involves the brutal slaying of an 8-year-old Alexandria, Virginia boy, Kevin Shifflett, who was stabbed to death in April in his great-grandparents’ front yard. The boy was white, and DNA and other evidence points to a black killer. It turns out the alleged killer also carried out a hammer attack on a white person seven years ago. For that crime, he was sentenced to prison and released just 12 days before the killing of Kevin Shifflett. He lived just five blocks from the house where Kevin was murdered.
The Washington Post, which covers the Alexandria area, has gone out of its way to obscure the racist nature of these crimes. A July 4th article on the case waited until deep inside the article to mention that the suspect is black. A July 6th article didn’t mention his race. But in going back in history to report on the hammer attack seven years ago, the Post quoted the 29-year-old victim, Leonard Riddle, as saying his attacker came at him yelling, "What the [expletive] are you looking at?" Referring to the Shifflett and Riddle cases, the Post said, "In each case, an assailant lashed out at a stranger for no reason and then calmly walked away."
But race was the reason. Riddle was white, and his attacker was black. But Post readers had no way of knowing that because the paper carefully doctored that quote from the attacker. The Post’s ombudsman now admits that the entire quote was "What the [expletive] are you looking at, whitey?" She says Post editors eliminated the word "whitey" because they were "not sure about the source or the relevance of race to the unfolding investigation."
But the source was the victim who saw the attacker. And the relevance should be left to the readers. This is just plain dishonesty on the part of the Post. The paper never gave any hint in the original story that it had cut off the quote in mid-sentence. But those who watched the victim on local TV broadcasts using that term in describing what the attacker had said to him had to know that the Post was denying them critical information that was being reported elsewhere.
Those readers bombarded the Post with complaints, forcing the ombudsman to address the matter. She basically defended the dishonest editing, calling it a "judgment call" which was overly cautious. It seems that the paper can’t seem to bear the thought of blacks committing hate crimes against whites. But one man had his head bashed in, and an 8-year-old boy is dead. Politically-correct reporting could result in more crime victims.
This is circular... you chose to hyphenate to cover for your stereotypes and prejudices, and the hyphenation is your way of showing the world you are in denial.
This hyphenation thing is just an example of multiculturalism and is not good for a cohesive society.
First, you are a moron (and please feel free to ask the a-mod to yank this, but I'm gonna type-down some truth here, and you may be offended). But I will prove scientifically and mathematically that you are, in fact, either 1)a moron, or 2)illiterate.
You: Are you supposed to respect an individual more because the individual claims to be hyphenated?
Me: Yes, of course you are supposed to respect us more than "regular" Americans. The fact that you had to ask shows your reliance on stereotypes and prejudices.
Analysis: I'm kidding. I don't know you at all.
You: I respect regular Americans, and wonder why you choose not to speak for regular Americans.
Me: By not respecting Hyphenated-Americans (H-A's), you are again showcasing your ignorance. All I can say is H-A H-A. (it's a joke, I'm kidding, get over it).
Analysis: H-A, H-A = HA HA = joke.
Me: But I do think that the term Anglo-American has a future.
Analysis: I think this is true. White racial identity can and will only increase in the upcoming years (it's at zero now, the only place to go is up). The U.S. Supreme Court last year said colleges could use racial prefrences as a criteria in admissions (oh yea, but only for 25 years). With the eeoc, racial preferences, public housing, welfare, etc., why shouldn't "people of non-color" start feeling victimized as well? I want my free handout, damnit.
Conclusion: You can't read or are a moron.
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