{"id":1641,"date":"2013-12-15T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T00:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfeder.com\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2013-12-16T03:57:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T09:57:51","slug":"susanna-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/2013\/12\/15\/susanna-for-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Susanna for sale?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Susanna<\/a>

<\/a> Susanna Negovan<\/p><\/div>\n

Who knows? Was it the \u201cthousand dollars in wine and champagne\u201d she had at the dinner? Or was it the crystal vase from Tiffany & Co. delivered to her home as a gift before the event?<\/p>\n

Whatever it was, Susanna Negovan\u2019s report last week<\/a> on \u201cGood Day Chicago\u201d struck some staffers at WFLD-Channel 32 as more brazen and more obnoxious than anything she\u2019d ever done before. And that\u2019s saying a lot.<\/p>\n

Ever since she began as a daily contributor to the Fox station\u2019s morning newscast, Negovan has boasted about free stuff she gets from companies she promotes on the show. \u201cShe tells people in the newsroom how she never pays for a spa service and brags about the free handbags, accessories and expensive makeup she gets, all from companies featured in her news segments,\u201d one co-worker said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t even have the smarts to shut up about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negovan\u2019s full-time job is publisher and editor of Splash, the celebrity supplement published by Sun-Times Media and featuring Jenny McCarthy as a columnist. She was hired to launch the weekly by Michael Ferro, chairman of Wrapports LLC, after she\u2019d served four years as founding editor of Michigan Avenue magazine. Sun-Times readers may remember her from \u201dSusanna\u2019s Night Out,\u201d the nightlife column she began writing a dozen years ago.<\/p>\n

A 1995 graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Negovan has spent most of her career in the ethically murky intersection of advertising, public relations, news and publishing. As a free-lance contributor to \u201cGood Day Chicago,\u201d she\u2019s been operating in a way that Fox would not condone for full-time employees.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0last Monday's piece was over the top by any standard. It was a report on a private party in Chicago for customers of Tiffany & Co. who\u2019d spent a million dollars or more on jewelry. Negovan shot video of herself trying on a $750,000 diamond bracelet and other baubles at the event, which she attended with her husband, Tom Negovan, a reporter for Tribune Broadcasting WGN-Channel 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had black cod. My husband had filet mignon. It was a really elegant catered affair,\u201d Negovan told viewers. \u201cWe probably each had about a thousand dollars in wine and champagne. They had roses at each centerpiece. I mean it was just incredibly elaborate. Just a very elegant night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here's the kicker: \u201cBefore the party what was so cool is they dropped off a box at my house, and they had gifts for me, including this vase \u2014 a crystal vase \u2014 and a Tiffany book,\u201d Negovan said, displaying the trademark blue box on the air. \u201cWhich is so cool before a party to actually receive like a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negovan\u2019s admission prompted one incredulous employee to wonder: \u201cYou do a commercial for Tiffany and then show the free gifts you received at the end?\u201d Calling it \u201ca blatant ethical lapse no one else at any\u00a0real news\u00a0station would tolerate,\u201d the source said complaints about her to general manager Dennis Welsh and news director Tom Doerr have gone unheeded.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t stop there. Negovan also uses her position on Fox 32 to promote her interest in Splash \u2014 and vice versa.<\/p>\n

In another segment<\/a> last week, Negovan reported on a party she attended at the home of Robert Mariano, CEO of Roundy\u2019s supermarket chain. \u201cYou know everybody loves Bob Mariano,\u201d Negovan gushed. \u201cHe is a folk hero because he started as a deli clerk. Now he\u2019s the chairman of a huge grocery store company.\u201d She went on to describe the food at the party as \u201camazing\u201d and \u201cextraordinary,\u201d the desserts as \u201cdecadent\u201d and \u201cincredible,\u201d and the guests as \u201call these glamorous beautiful people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She did not mention that Mariano\u2019s happens to be one of the largest weekly advertisers in Splash and therefore one of her biggest clients.<\/p>\n

\"Jon<\/a>

Jon Kelley in Splash<\/p><\/div>\n

By the same token, this weekend\u2019s issue of Splash featured a full-page puff piece<\/a> on Jon Kelley, the former local sportscaster who just signed on as a co-host of Fox 32\u2019s morning show. Claiming without any support whatsoever that \u201cKelley is already starting to shake things up at \u2018Good Day Chicago,\u2019 \u201d the article includes the preposterous assertion that \u201cback in the \u201990s, Kelley was one of the city\u2019s most beloved newscasters.\u201d The Fox promotion department could not have excreted a more remarkable pile of bullshit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written many favorable columns about Negovan, whom I considered a friend when we both worked at the Sun-Times. I always thought of her as bright, talented and supremely ambitious. Soon after she rejoined the Sun-Times to start Splash, we had a falling out over critical comments I made about Ferro. She considers him \u201ca really incredible boss\u201d<\/a> and \u201cone of the most fearless people I\u2019ve worked for.\u201d I think he\u2019s a charlatan and a phony. So we agreed to disagree and didn\u2019t talk after that.<\/p>\n

After her piece on the Tiffany party aired, I emailed Negovan twice, asking her to clarify her position on accepting things from companies she reports on for Fox. She called to say she was \u201cputting together an email\u201d that would explain everything, and asked that I use her entire response. \u201cI would just prefer to give you the language that I\u2019ve thought about versus something dumb that could come out of my mouth,\u201d she said. I told her I would include whatever she wrote. The rest of our conversation was off the record, but she assured me that I\u2019d hear back as soon as she got her statement approved by her bosses here and Fox publicists in New York.<\/p>\n

On Friday \u2014 four days after I first approached her \u2014 I received Negovan\u2019s response. Here is her entire message: \u201cHi Rob, Thanks for reaching out. My policy is not to solicit or accept gifts in exchange for coverage. The bud vase has been added to our box of upcoming donations. Thank you for watching! Susanna.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who knows? Was it the \u201cthousand dollars in wine and champagne\u201d she had at the dinner? Or was it the crystal vase from Tiffany & Co. delivered to her home as a gift before the event? Whatever it was, Susanna Negovan\u2019s report last week on \u201cGood Day Chicago\u201d struck some staffers at WFLD-Channel 32 as... Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/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\/1641"}],"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=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}