{"id":10622,"date":"2016-03-01T09:25:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T15:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=10622"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:37:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T19:37:42","slug":"and-the-oscar-tickets-go-to-michael-ferro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2016\/03\/01\/and-the-oscar-tickets-go-to-michael-ferro\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Academy Award tickets go to . . . Michael Ferro"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael<\/a>

<\/a> Michael Ferro<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019re Michael Ferro, $44.4 million will buy you more than the board chairmanship of Tribune Publishing,<\/a> parent company of the Chicago Tribune <\/a>and the Los Angeles Times.<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019ll also get you tickets to the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n

PoliticoMedia<\/a> reported Monday that Ferro took passes obtained by the L.A. Times for its coverage of the Oscars.<\/p>\n

\"The Times had been allocated six passes for entry to the Dolby Theater \u2013 essential access to tell the story of the night by the big broadsheet located in America\u2019s entertainment capital \u2013 but until the last minute not one of them was allocated to a reporter,\" wrote<\/a>\u00a0media analyst Ken Doctor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTribune Publishing Chairman Michael Ferro and CEO Justin Dearborn reportedly used the passes, each along with a guest. The last two were earmarked for publisher Tim Ryan, who was persuaded to do the right thing and gave up his seats after receiving a flabbergasted email from the Times\u2019 film desk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctor noted the irony of it all: \u201c \u2018Spotlight\u2019 \u2014 a cinematic triumph celebrating the craft of working journalists \u2014 unexpectedly won the Best Picture Oscar, while simultaneously, the L.A. Times\u2019 own journalists had to fight their bosses to do their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sources long have described Ferro as \u201cstar struck\u201d and \u201ccelebrity-obsessed,\u201d citing his hiring <\/a>of Jenny McCarthy as a columnist at the Sun-Times <\/a>and his buying<\/a> a credit as executive producer of \u201cLife Itself,\u201d the documentary about the late film critic Roger Ebert.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael\u2019s contribution to the film . . . amounted to nearly half of the total funds raised from individual donors,\u201d according to film\u2019s website.<\/a> \u201cHis support for \u2018Life Itself\u2019 came as a charitable gift through his personal non-profit foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tuesday afternoon update:<\/strong> Davan Maharaj, editor of the Los Angeles Times, released this statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe requested Michael and Justin attend the Awards ceremony, just like top media executives of other major outlets do.\u00a0The film industry represents one of our most important coverage areas \u2014 and \u00a0the paper\u2019s largest advertisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a robust contingent of reporters and photographers on the red carpet, in the ballroom, backstage and in the auditorium. That\u2019s why we had 3 million unique visitors consuming our continuous Oscar coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re Michael Ferro, $44.4 million will buy you more than the board chairmanship of Tribune Publishing, parent company of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. It\u2019ll also get you tickets to the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10622"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10626,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions\/10626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}