Romenesko

Chicago Reader
In a 2002 e-mail to another Hollinger officer, Conrad Black wrote: "There has not been an occasion for many months when I got on our plane without wondering whether it was really affordable. But I'm not prepared to reenact the French Revolutionary renunciation of the rights of the nobility." Michael Miner reports Black wrote to Hollinger execs the same year: "Care must be taken not to allow this [way of life] to degenerate into decadence. But nor should we allow the agitations of shareholders, amplified by certain of our colleagues discountenanced at the performance of their stock options, to force us into a hair shirt, the corporate equivalent of sackcloth and ashes. ...We have a certain style that all these shareholders were aware of when they came in."