Toledo Guild Won't Arbitrate Fired 'Blade' Reporter's Case

By: Joe Strupp A staff writer for The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, who was fired in May for writing an anonymous letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board claiming the newspaper's "Coingate" series was tainted, will not have his unlawful termination complaint taken to arbitration, the local Newspaper Guild president said Wednesday.

Lillian Covarrubias, president of the Toledo Newspaper Guild, said the local chapter of the union had decided not to take the case of former reporter George Tanber to arbitration because it did not have a good chance of success.

"The information we received on this indicated it is not something we would win," Covarrubias told E&P. "There are a lot of factors when an executive committee decides not to take something to arbitration, if it is winnable or whether the complaint is sustainable."

Tanber, a 14-year Blade veteran, was fired May 26, two days after he admitted writing the Pulitzer letter. As a member of the guild, Tanber had the right to file a grievance, which he did in June, claiming unlawful termination. The guild, on his behalf, had forwarded it to the newspaper, which rejected it.

That set the stage for the guild to take the case to an arbitration hearing before an administrative law judge. Covarrubias said the local guild executive committee met last week and voted not to take the case to arbitration. She declined to reveal the exact vote, but indicated it was not unanimous. The general membership upheld the decision in a meeting the following evening.

"It was very difficult because when we talk about grievances, we can talk about contract language only," Covarrubias explained. "We have to look at the facts as they pertain to the contract, it is with that that we made our decision."

Tanber, who has remained out of a job since his termination, expressed his disappointment. "I put my career on the line, in part to make the Blade a better place to work," Tanber said today. "Not to have the support of some of my colleagues is disappointing."

Blade Editor Ron Royhab said the arbitration decision was a guild matter, but added that "The guild did what it thought was right, and I respect it." When asked if the reluctance of the union to continue fighting the termination further justified the firing, he said, "I don't feel we needed any more justification to terminate Mr. Tanber for what he had done."

The events leading to Tanber's dismissal began in April when he sent his letter to the Pulitzer board just weeks before it gathered to select the Pulitzer Prize winners. The much-praised "Coingate" series (subject of a major E&P feature story last August) failed to win the Public Service prize, for which it had been a finalist, although there is no evidence the letter had any effect.

But the letter did draw notice when Royhab hired a private investigator weeks later to track down the author.

The anonymous letter, an eight-page document dated March 28, was titled "Deception and Coverup Taint Award-Winning Coingate Series." It claimed, among other things, that the Blade was aware of alleged illegal campaign contributions by GOP fund-raiser Tom Noe prior to the 2004 presidential election. Noe was the chief architect of the Coingate scandal in which tens of millions of dollars in state funds were lost in a rare-coin investment scheme that has already resulted in several convictions, including that of Noe.

Royhab, when he learned of the letter, wrote a lengthy rebuttal denying all charges, and sent it to the Pulitzer board. "The content [of the letter] is inaccurate and false," he told E&P soon after.

He then hired an investigator to find the anonymous author. Among other things, Tanber's computer records were seized in the investigation. "We are trying to get to the bottom of something we find to be quite disturbing," Royhab commented at the time. "Wouldn't you want to know if someone is trying to injure your reputation?"

At the time of Tanber's firing, the Blade released a statement under Royhab's name. It said, in part, that besides writing the letter to the Pulitzer Board, since last summer Tanber had fed "information, some that was untrue, about the Blade and some of its staff members," to E&P and Salon.com.

Covarrubias said the guild, in recent weeks, had sought more information from the newspaper about why Tanber was terminated in preparation for an arbitration battle. She said the Blade indicated he was fired for "dishonesty, inappropriate behavior, and outside actions that violated his employment."

"More information substantiated their claim," she said, declining to offer more specifics. "Every arbitration has the potential of costing $10,000 in fees and lost time and there is a lot of cost, but that was not a factor in our decision."

Tanber said he was exploring other options for challenging the termination, but has made no decisions yet.

Covarrubias said the guild was not afraid of taking winnable cases to arbitration, noting that the union had successfully brought two other Blade unlawful-termination cases to hearings in just the past year.

In an unrelated matter, the guild remains locked in a bitter contract battle with the Blade, in which the paper is seeking a 10% salary reduction and vacation givebacks. The guild local, which represents 340 Blade employees, has been without an agreement since the last deal ended in March, Covarrubias said. She described the current talks as "not yet terrible, but certainly regressive."