Conrad Black goes down on four of 13 charges, including obstruction of justice. He probably faces up to 20 years in prison plus a fine of US$250,000 on each count. Black's legal team say they will appeal.

This would seem to make his "Conrad will win!" t-shirts something of an ironic collector's item, wouldn't it? Unless you count beating the racketeering charge, the most serious one he faced, as a victory.

In fairness, Mark Powers, Black's civil lawyer, noted the counts on which Black was convicted involve only about US$3.5 million*, while the overall allegations against him and the other defendants involved about US$60 million.

* Eddie Greenspan, one of Black's criminal lawyers, said the loss attributed to Black is US$2.9 million.

At his press conference, U.S. federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicated a sentence of 15 to 20 years would be sought. The Globe and Star headlines indicated Black faces a maximum of 35 years in prison.

Sentencing will take place on Nov. 30.

In addition to the other punishment, the prosecution wants a forfeiture order. Judge Amy St. Eve will rule on that issue on Monday.

When Conrad gets out of prison at whatever future point, the one-time Canadian citizen (he gave it up to sit in the British House of Lords) might not have his Florida mansion to enjoy.

From The Globe and Mail story: (here's the Globe's Conrad Black section)

“The jury sorted through all the noise, they ignored all the fluff and focused on the critical non compete charges,” (Queen's University professor Paul Paton) said in an interview. “The fact that they are getting hard time for corporate misconduct signals that these are real charges and real crimes.”

This CTV.ca story has video a-go-go.

Here's the take of Mark Steyn, who has been offering a unique, almost singular interpretation of the trial for Maclean's:

There will be recriminations a-plenty over what was just announced on the 12th floor in Chicago. Conrad Black was found NOT GUILTY on racketeering, NOT GUILTY on tax fraud, NOT GUILTY on the CanWest scheme, NOT GUILTY on Bora Bora, the Park Avenue apartment and Barbara's birthday party, NOT GUILTY on the individual non-competes on US newspaper sales.

He has been found GUILTY in just two narrow areas - "obstruction of justice" re the security camera footage of him removing boxes from 10 Toronto Street, and three "mail fraud" counts relating to the APC non-compete agreement, in which (as the government argued) Black and Radler paid Black and Radler not to compete with Black and Radler. As I argued here and here, those were always the easiest charges to shoot for if you wanted to convict on something. It speaks very poorly for Black's legal representation that the best argument against the APC charges was made by David Radler and the best argument against the obstruction count was made to me over a cup of tea by Barbara Amiel.

When you're found guilty in only two narrow areas, that's practically the same as an acquittal.

There were three others found guilty. Former Hollinger executive Jack Boultbee was convicted on three of nine charges. Fellow former Hollinger executive Peter Atkinson was found guilty on two of six charges and Hollinger lawyer Mark Kipnis on four of nine charges.

Personal notes

I awoke around noon to the sound of burbling from CBC Radio, hearing only the words "Conrad" and "guilty."

As you might appreciate, I thought I was still asleep and dreaming.

My personal history with Black/Hollinger goes back to 1987, when I interviewed for a job at the not-so-mighty Cranbrook Daily Townsman (not-so-affectionately nicknamed the Clownsman by some ex-staffers) of the not-so Sterling newspaper chain owned by Black. An excerpt from an earlier blog posting:

After hitting town, the first thing I did was buy a copy of the paper. The paper had a picture of a trained bear on top of a barrel -- taken from a hundred miles away with a wide-angle lense. The photo was a grotesque embarrassment.

Over the course of the interview, the managing editor at the time brought out a copy of the paper. As if he was reading my mind, he said: "We've had a lot of people here who were really into photography, who really tried to take good pictures. We found that to be a problem." When I found out my starting salary would be lower than my existing one, that pretty much ended the matter for me.

That "problem" remark temporarily made me woozy. It haunts me still.

In early 1993, I tried to recruit Hollinger executives to speak on a Canadian Association of Journalists on a panel called "Needy or greedy: Are Canada's media companies really suffering in the recession?" It  was based on an article by then-Globe and Mail reporter Harvey Enchin, essentially about how despite much wailing and moaning, the companies were getting by quite nicely under the circumstances.

Two Hollinger types I contacted were David Radler and Peter White. Radler didn't want to come to Toronto from Vancouver, but said he'd do it if we put a phone on a chair and let him call in. White demurred as well, although I remember him quipping, "We love the working journalist!"

The thing that sticks out about those encounters was how these two senior executives answered their own phones. They listened to my pitch and gave me a decision immediately. When I tried to get someone from Southam, I had to go through several levels of filters and listen to people hem and haw and screw around and do everything possible to avoid a decision. That gave me insight into why Hollinger was the predator and Southam the prey (Hollinger took a position in Southam in January 1993, buying out TorStar's shares; Black would take control in 1996* ).

* Here's a comprehensive timeline of Black's career compiled by the Toronto Star's David Olive. He also collected some Conrad quotes.

I did get to bask in the glow of Black's greatness at the 1994 Canadian Association of Journalists convention in Ottawa, where he was the keynote speaker. I remember an undercurrent of fear in the room as this new titan of the Canadian newspaper industry took to the podium. He got challenged a tiny bit, but I don't recall Conrad getting a very rough ride from the crowd*. He seemed bemused as he batted away the lame questions. He did forcefully stand up for the autonomy of his publishers.

* My joke to two fairly senior journos afterwards was something like this: "On the matter of Southam, sir, I just want to say ... keep downsizing! Keep whipping that company into shape! And should you need a loyalist to help ...!" They laughed.

Afterwards, I did scrum him, noting that I'd bought his autobiography A Life In Progress and that should entitle me to a question. I noted he talked about reporter's ethics, but I asked him about publisher's ethics. Didn't his publishers have some responsibilities to their communities, etc., etc.? As I recall it, Black grudgingly agreed with that point. I didn't have time to ask a follow-up, but here it is now: Mr. Black, have you ever fired a publisher for putting the paper's economic interests ahead of its journalistic integrity?

As I understand it, and I'm not an expert on this point, Black did give his publishers a reasonably free hand. They weren't under orders to run lousy newspapers; they were just under orders to make them as profitable as humanly possible. Some publishers were reasonably good bosses, and some reportedly made their staff bring in their own toilet paper in a fanatical bid to keep costs down.

My most traumatic experience at the hands of Hollinger came in 1996, when they downsized the Leader-Post, my employer of the time, and 88 co-workers (see this blog post for details), or about one-quarter of the staff.

Black reportedly found the phrase "drowning the kittens"* to be an amusing way to conceptualize the layoffs. Ryerson University j-prof John Miller, in his 1998 book Yesterday’s News: Why Canada’s Daily Newspapers Are Failing Us, has more on that.

* A former co-worker who eventually worked for the Vancouver Province said Radler once showed up in that newsroom, exclaiming there were too many people there. "You know how you get the right number? Count all the chairs and take away every fourth one," he said -- loud enough for everyone to hear. When he saw that got everyone's attention and felt the requisite shiver, Radler left, a smirk on his bullying face.

Bizarrely, I got downsized a second time in 1997 after Southam decided to restructure the Southam New Media Centre in Edmonton by firing everyone and then allowing them to apply for a much smaller number of jobs in Hamilton (more on that in this blog post). However, the Edmonton Journal hired me to work as fill-in web producer over the winter, so I should thank the company for that opportunity.

While I was still working at Southam New Media, Black came to Edmonton to speak at the Churchill Society. All the top editors had their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes on. The Journal was considered to be a bit more editorially left than other Southam papers (these things are all relative), and on the door of the editorial board offices, they had a copy of one of my favourite Conrad quotes, where he talks about the "soft, left, envious pap that pours like sludge through the centre of Southam newspapers." That quote disappeared before the visit. It never returned.

Interestingly, under Black's proprietorship, union activity flared at some papers where none had existed before -- the Leader-Post, the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald. The L-P's newsroom certified after a nasty struggle, the Journal's management put down its revolt (demoting the revolting managing editor in the process) and the Herald went through a very bitter strike, starting in November 1999. Black seemed to take that strike personally, and Hollinger spared no expense in crushing it.

All three situations stemmed from bad management (remember my 1994 question to Black about publishers' responsibilities?).

In the spring of 1999, I atttended the CAJ convention in Vancouver. And who was on the media concentration panel but my old friend David Radler! I had a number of pointed questions for him. I recalled for him something Peter White had said at a 1994 Inter American Press Association convention in Toronto.

White, then chair of Hollinger's UniMedia division, read out this quote from a 1925 Wall Street Journal editorial, according to a Toronto Star report:

"A newspaper is a private enterprise, owing nothing to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest. It is emphatically the property of its owner, who is selling a manufactured product at his own risk."

"No public interest"?!?! To my mind, that goes to the heart of what journalism is about. Here is what I recall asking Radler: "Does that quote show what people at the highest levels of Hollinger really think about the relationship between their newspapers and the communities they serve?"

Radler shook his head 'no'.*

* Something that prompted me to look for look for work outside the Western Producer, where I was the web editor, was a phone call in early 2000 from a CBC Radio acquaintance who told me there was a hot rumour that Hollinger was looking to buy it. Agghh!!

But when you have editors who say that taking good pictures is a problem for them, you really have to wonder.

There are those who defend Black -- and there are many conservative fellow travellers (Mark Steyn, David Frum) who did very well by him -- and praise him as a proprietor. Mind you, there are those not ideologically in tune with Black who generally have different opinions. And they probably never worked for the Clownsman or other papers of that ilk.

Some note the investments he made to improve various newspapers. However, those papers tended to be in competitive markets. In his monopoly markets, Black showed no interest in improving or reinvesting in those papers. Kirk Lapointe, who was then the executive editor of the National Post, said at the 1998 CAJ conference in Toronto that the company would invest in the bigger papers first, then in the smaller ones. I don't think that ever happened.

When the dust settles, I wonder whether the glorious vanity project that was the National Post will be identified as the beginning of the end for Black. Over his career, critics knocked Black for not building anything, and now he had created his wet dream of a conservative newspaper. While I had my criticisms of it, primarily because of its relentless conservative spin, one had to give it credit for shaking up this country's newspaper industry.

The satirical press claimed that Radler was never enthusiastic about the N-P because the business case for it wasn't sound. While Radler, in one interview, touted the paper as part of a strategy to serve the world's top 200 global brands, I don't know if the paper, now owned by CanWest, is profitable yet.

When Black finally sold out, he was reportedly asked by one distraught employee, "what about the people who believed in your vision?" Black reportedly replied to tell them to spend $200 million of their money.

At the same time, Black was living the high life. He had dream homes, a corporate jet, A-list celebrity friends and fancy parties in swank Manhattan restaurants. He got his peerage -- Lord Black of Crossharbour -- in 2001, with an introduction in the House of Lords by Margaret Thatcher. Life was as good as it was ever going to get. But some people were starting to wonder how he was paying for this billionaire's lifestyle when he was just a multimillionaire. His wife, Barbara Amiel Black, probably didn't help matters when she told Vogue magazine in 2002: "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds."

Black has described himself as a "Darwinian capitalist." One early capitalist act at Upper Canada College was stealing exam results and selling them to classmates -- something that got him kicked out.

"Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated -- unfairly so, in my opinion," he once told journalist Peter C. Newman. "There is nothing wrong with avarice as a motive, as long as it doesn't lead to dishonest or anti-social conduct."

Unfortunately for him, the nine women and three men on his jury found he crossed that line. And as a result, his life might end in prison.

Addendum

I suppose I should try and say something good about Lord Black of Cellblock B.

Former Montreal Gazette reporter Alexander Norris was a 1999 National Newspaper Award finalist (the award was issued in the spring of 2000). As a runner-up, he got to make a speech before the news industry's luminaries. In that speech, Norris said words to the effect of how fortunate it was that good work could still be done despite the negative impact of concentrated media ownership on the newspaper business.

His proprietor at the time was Conrad.

When he returned to the newsroom, Norris was getting stares from some managers that are normally reserved for those newly diagnosed with cancer or convicted of treason.

Hushed whispers fell silent when he drew near. Managers slipped into offices for urgent impromptu meetings.

Finally, Norris himself was called into an office and told there was a phone call for him.

"Alexander Norris?" asked the baroque voice after he picked up the phone. "This is Conrad Black."

And they had a 20-minute chat (Alexander told a lucky bunch of us the story at a dinner in St. John's, N.L. back in 2002 during the CAJ convention; he's a good raconteur!). Black pressed his position about the unfairness of Norris's statement, and Alex didn't back down off his own views. They called it a draw.

Black's final words? He didn't want to see the conversation reproduced in the next day's Globe and Mail.

I don't believe it was, but the satirical press did report on it at some point.

Now, the Gazette is unionized, which changes things, but I didn't hear any stories of Norris being punished for his impudence.

But if Black was willing to argue it out with a mouthy employee rather than squash him like a bug, I'll give him credit for that.*

* The Toronto Star's David Olive says Black's primary contribution to journalism in this country is libel chill, not engaging in robust debate with critics. See this blog post for details.

Skip ahead three years for a look at the case of Gazette columnist Sue Montgomery, who had been critical of the Asperization of the paper. She got dinged with a two-week, unpaid suspension at one point for not getting the side of a Filipino agency embroiled in a controversial story. The only person to have previously gotten such a long suspension was a political reporter who got caught with cocaine and pot on the prime minister's plane in the 1970s.

She eventually won her grievance and is still at the paper. I don't believe Norris is still there.