The timing could not have been worse. As In Review publisher Boyer Barner shops for a prospective investor to boost his struggling paper, star columnist and one-time staff writer Rebekah Gleaves has left the weekly in a huff. Stating that she is owed more than $3,000 for more than two months of work, Gleaves is now planning on filing a lawsuit against Barner for damages and more.
“In Review has been more than a job. It’s been a mission,” she says. “But in the end, he screwed me. On a personal level, it’s a real slap in the face.”
As a frank and often hilarious chronicler of the Nashville social scene, Gleaves may have been the paper’s most popular writer, placing near the top of numerous reader surveys. This past summer, however, Gleaves left her full-time position to go study law at the University of Memphis. Still, Gleaves continued to write her “Last Call” column. In fact, Gleaves drove three hours to Nashville most weekends in order to add local color to her writing.
But for Gleaves, the sacrifice became too steep once the paper fell behind in paying her. “My rent was due, I had no money for bills,” she recalls. “I called Boyer and said I can’t even pay my rent right now and he told me to ‘hang on.’ I told him ‘I can’t tell the landlord to hang on, I can’t tell the electric company to hang on.’ ”
In a statement e-mailed to the Scene, Barner implies that it was the paper, in fact, that let Gleaves go. “Understandably, Rebekah’s relocation to Memphis to pursue a law degree has put a constraint on her ability to write the column ‘Last Call’ in a timely and relevant manner. We regret the situation, but feel compelled to consider writers who live in Nashville.”
When she read Barner’s statement, Gleaves bristled at the suggestion that she was let go. “If Boyer’s bank account was as big as his balls, I’d be getting paid right now.”
Barner did not answer questions about how much he owes Gleaves, although he did say he’ll have a new “Last Call Girl” this coming January. In the meantime, however, the publisher may have more concerns. Recently, a prospective investor released In Review’s business plan to the Scene. According to the document, while the paper projects 1999 sales totals of $360,000, the monthly overhead of $66,500 indicates that this year’s losses may exceed $400,000.
Barner claims that the Scene’s documents are out-of-date and that the monthly overhead is off by more than $10,000, which would still put this year’s losses at under $300,000. Still, the Scene’s source maintains that he received the document within the last two weeks. In addition, the document’s listed sales projections are only 11 percent greater than its actual sales, indicating that the document is very much a current one.
Making matters trickier for Barner, Gleaves is not the only person who is waiting for money. The business plan lists the paper’s debt at roughly a quarter-million dollars.
Nevertheless, Barner is valuing his paper at $1.5 million, a seemingly high number for a paper that has yet to turn a profit.
According to Richard Karpel, executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, most weeklies sell for anywhere from one to two times their yearly revenue. That In Review is being valued at nearly four times its 1999 projected sales seems high, he says. Barner, however, contends that because In Review is in the early stage of its growth, its valuation is based on market potential and investment to date, not revenues.
So what now for Barner? Late last week, he was approved for a $100,000 loan, which might help pay the bills for a while. But according to the business plan, Barner is looking for a big-time investor willing to buy 80 percent of the company stock at $1.2 million. Barner, along with a management team comprised of the paper’s top employees, will retain the other 20 percent with the stated goal of buying 40 percent of the company back within five years. In a telling statement, the business plan notes that the original investors “have all verbally agreed to sell their shares at original investment and in lieu of interest.”
(Full disclosure: I used to write for In Review and am in fact still owed a small sum of money dating back to when I worked there.)
Focus on the facts
In the introduction to last week’s overhyped and underwhelming “Secret Tapes,” a multi-part series on James Earl Ray’s final interview, WSMV-TV Channel 4 reporter Francene Cucinello said both Ray and an unidentified man “paid off guards to smuggle in a tape recorder and a disposable camera.” Well, if that’s true then Ray was losing it in his old age. According to Pam Hobbins, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction, Ray had a tape recorder himself and it wasn’t a violation of policy for him to have it.
But there’s a larger point here than some apparently inaccurate reporting. In stating that prison guards took bribes, Channel 4 is making a serious allegation. And yet the station never tried to verify it, preferring instead to take the word of an anonymous source. According to Hobbins, Cucinello didn’t bother to phone the Corrections Department to ask whether guards were bribed.
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