Reputation Gurus

I ordinarily keep my blog postings focused on corporate reputation management, but today is a bit different, so forgive the brief rant. 

Journalists cover controversy and scandal, and sometimes one has to wonder just who cares that Lindsay Lohan ran a red traffic light or that a senior executive at a publicly traded company had an extra-marital affair with a famous journalist.  Case in point … some of yesterday’s (and this morning’s) news in the US focused on the allegation that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton forgot to tip the waitress at a restaurant in Iowa.

Regardless of your political leanings, this is simply not news.  Of course, Hillary should have tipped her waitress, but one can imagine how that might be an oversight when you’re running for president.

And, that’s why I say, “Hooray for Anita Esterday.”  Anita is that waitress who got stiffed by Hillary.  She’s a waitress at the Maid-Rite diner in Iowa.  And here’s how she responded to the media questions about her lack of tip:  “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

Amen.

I read today that Les Echos, the leading French financial newspaper (owned by British company Pearson, which also owns the Financial Times), will not print this morning because its journalists voted to protest its sale to LVMH. 

I have to secretly cheer for the idea of journalists banding together to fight off an unwanted owner (one wonders what Wall Street Journal journalists might have accomplished if they did something similar when Dow Jones was up for sale), but I also wonder how much impact it really will have.  After all, this is a time of dwindling newspaper circulations.  If Les Echos doesn’t print, and nobody minds because newspaper circulation is getting smaller each day, then what does that say for need for Les Echos?

I’m sure that there will be many comparisons between Stan O’Neill’s dismissal from Merrill Lynch and Chuck Prince’s departure yesterday from Citigroup.  Both men tried to change very distinct and strong cultures, both men tried to broaden their respectives globally, and both men fell to the credit crisis that is gripping the United States, if not the world.  Both men also ended up making a lot of enemies, removing executives who challenged them.

I have to wonder, though, what the long-term fall-out will be of letting such high profile CEOs go, particularly in the wake of poor financial earnings.  With shareholders demanding the ouster of CEOs based on one or two bad quarters, who in their right mind would want that job? 

 One wonders who’s next to go …