Murdoch: {Publisher Judith} Regan Was "Not A Team Player"

Murdoch: Regan Was "Not A Team Player"
February 09, 2007
By Kimberly Maul

Rupert Murdoch made a public statement yesterday about the controversial firing of publisher Judith Regan from News Corp.'s HarperCollins publishing company, the New York Daily News reported. Regan was "not a team player," Murdoch said, "and that's putting it mildly…she wasn't for us."

At "Media Summit New York" at McGraw-Hill's headquarters, Murdoch said that early on he gave the green light to the television and book project for O.J. Simpson's If I Did It, which was canceled in late November, as long as the money went to the kids. According to the Daily News, Murdoch said he signed off on the project, but didn't stay on top of it, until he was reached while on his ranch in Australia about the public outcry.

"It was a mistake," he said. "I said , 'If it really reads like a confession, he gets no money.' It's my fault. I should have been closer to it." But even the drama with If I Did It wasn't what caused Regan's abrupt firing in December. Another controversy, like the one surrounding the inventive Mickey Mantle memoir, by Peter Golenbock, caused Murdoch to stop and think.

"I thought, oh God, we don't want to go through this again," he said, according to the Daily News. "Just cancel that book." Regan was fired on Dec. 16, after allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks to a HarperCollins lawyer.
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http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/publisher/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003543975


For a slightly different version of events:

New York: Judith Regan Fired Over Mickey Mantle Book

Then New York Daily News has details from New York's upcoming behind-the-scenes story on the Judith Regan firing, and apparently it's wasn't the universally-reviled O.J. Simpson book that sank her, but the camel's-back-breaking-straw that was the planned biography of Mickey Mantle which starred the former baseball legend as the foul-mouthed, sex-crazed narrator (with a hook-up with Maryilyn Monroe to boot). Though Mantle's past (and own admissions) certainly supported such a characterization, the "supposed sullying of Mantle's name hit the cover of the Daily News" and Harper Collins' CEO Jane Friedman apparently "hit the roof" per the New York article by Vanessa Grigoriadis.

The piece, titled "Judith Regan: The Devil and O.J. Simpson" in what is either a nod to or an awkward coincidence with the seminal Vanity Fair feature on Regan, "The Devil And Miss Regan," also reports that HarperCollins staffers applauded when they were told of Regan's firing, that Regan was the last to know (staffers who thought she'd been escorted from the building goggled at her sitting at her desk eating a sandwich, oblivious). Grigoriadis describes the situation as a "knives-out corporate power struggle," culminating in the dramatic termination of Regan late on a Friday afternoon, right before the NewsCorp holiday party (here the News gets in a dig at the Post: "And it fell on the day News Corp. employees, including the staff of the money-losing New York Post, were celebrating their holiday party in New York's Hilton Hotel.")
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more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/28/new-york-judith-r_n_39849.html

or a really different version:

HarperCollins Gives Judith Regan The Shaft Over 'Kink'
By Mitch Marconi
Feb 8, 2007
It hasn't been a good run for Judith Regan. Regan, who made headlines recently for promoting a book by O.J. Simpson which led to her dismissal at HarperCollins, has had another project axed.

The Museum of Sex exhibit "Kink" opens tonight but it will open without the companion book that was one of Regan's pet projects.

The New York Daily News reports that just days after giving a contract to porn star Ron Jeremy for "Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz," HarperCollins canceled the book about taboo erotica.

A museum rep tells the News, "We are disappointed that HarperCollins does not support this project like Judith did. We are shopping the book out now to other publishers who have expressed interest."

This was sure to have a "long" shelf life if you ask us.

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_21263052.shtml

Murdoch needs to do some soul searching about how badly he wants to keep him on his "team".