News from One Herald Plaza

from MiamiHerald.com

Ibargüen named to AOL board

Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the Miami-based Knight Foundation, has been named to the board of directors of AOL, the online media company.

"AOL's focus on the delivery and sharing of news and information in communities meets an enormous need in a democracy. The range of their experiments in the field will provide knowledge about what actually will work in the digital age, what will be sustainable and profitable as we adapt to changing technology and customer needs and uses," Ibargüen said in a release.

Ibargüen, a former publisher of The Miami Herald, has been president and CEO of the Knight Foundation since 2005.

There are a few more paragraphs on the Herald's website, but the story - which has no byline - leaves out some facts.

Here's what the Herald didn't post.

Each year, AOL will pay Ibarguen a cash retainer of $100,000 and equity valued at $150,000. Ibarguen will serve on the board's audit and finance committee.

It gets better. According to this story, Ibargüen will "probably only have four meetings or so per year, which suggests he's getting paid $62,500 per meeting."

Meanwhile, over at the Herald, where Ibargüen once served as publisher, staffers learned Monday that they are being forced to take another unpaid one week furlough this year. It will be the fourth unpaid week off since March 2009.

News of the furloughs appeared briefly on the Herald's website Tuesday as part of this story but was deleted later in the day. Here's the missing paragraph:

The deal's end comes at a time when McClatchy is pressed for cash. The Herald announced Monday it would require workers to stay home for one week of unpaid furlough during the first half of 2011, and other McClatchy papers across the country recently announced another round of staff layoffs.

(Here's a Google cache of the page before the paragraph was deleted.)

Before Monday's announcement, the last round of furloughs at the Herald occurred in Sept. 2010 when the paper also eliminated 49 staff positions.

Less than six weeks after those positions were cut, Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal was rewarded with a promotion.

In case you're wondering - Gary Pruitt, the CEO of McClatchy, the Herald's parent company - makes almost $1 million a year. Other compensation puts his salary somewhere near $3,753,229.

The rich get richer and Herald staffers continue to get screwed!