STF na Mídia - MyClipp

“Unintentionally, I wound up following in my dad’s
footsteps,” he said. “But I have to admit I felt at first
that Archie had become a little irrelevant and fallen off
the radar of the national consciousness.”
Mr. Goldwater and Ms. Silberkleit, Michael’s widow,
had never met until, in a move intended to preserve
family control, they became co­-chief executives. They
both signed contracts that would run through 2013,
with Ms. Silberkleit, who at the time was a third­-grade
art teacher in New Jersey, responsible for scholastic
and theatrical ventures and Mr. Goldwater in control of
everything else. They were supposed to consult on
major decisions. But in an affidavit filed in support of
the preliminary injunction, Mr. Goldwater testified that
their working relationship had soon atrophied: “All too
often her reaction to any discussion at all which she
does not understand or does not like is to become
threatening and abusive.”
New Directions, and Discord
The company reported $40 million in sales for 2009
but was, according to Mr. Goldwater, floundering
financially and operationally. The overhead was too
high, the morale was too low. By 2010, Ms. Silberkleit
was, he said, exerting an increasingly “toxic” influence
on the employees and refusing to hold meaningful
discussions with him about crucial upgrades like
digitization.
Nor was she receptive to two creative diversifications
of the Archie story line: adding a gay character, Kevin
Keller, and moving forward with plans for a spinoff
series that projected Archie into fantasy marriages with
both of his long­-term love interests, Betty and
Veronica, according to affidavits filed by Mr. Goldwater
and Mr. Gorelick in State Supreme Court in
Manhattan.
The hugely enthusiastic response to Kevin Keller’s
September 2010 debut in Veronica No. 202
(Veronica’s crush is unrequited because of his being
gay) necessitated a second printing, unprecedented in
Archie history, and the Keller mini­-series for 2011 sold
out. So did the “Just Married” edition in the Life With
Archie magazine series that chronicled Archie’s two
possible marital futures. Suddenly Archie was
generating buzz and celebrity blurbs again, the subject
of segments on “The Colbert Report” and “The Rachel
Maddow Show” and the recipient of Glaad Media
Awards nominations.
In 2010, Ms. Silberkleit decided to leave teaching and
join Archie full time. According to Mr. Goldwater, the
complaints from the staff escalated; he said his
attempts to mediate were futile and often ended up
with them yelling at one another behind closed doors.
The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Sáb, 14 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
Mr. Gorelick, 70, said the staff “walked on eggshells”
when Ms. Silberkleit was around, fearful of being
insulted or castigated. She testified in January that she
felt ostracized and disrespected by Mr. Goldwater and
the staff; she denied the allegations of directing sexual
slurs at employees, though Mr. Gorelick and Mr.
Goldwater both described an episode in 2011 where
she walked into a meeting, pointed in turn at each of
the male editors present and said, “Penis, penis,
penis.”
What Mr. Goldwater refers to as “the boiling point” was
reached in May 2011 when a female employee
threatened to file a harassment complaint against Ms.
Silberkleit with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission. Mr. Goldwater hired a lawyer and
commissioned a human resources consultant to
investigate the accusations of workplace abuses; Ms.
Silberkleit was the only member of the company who
declined to be interviewed. The report, released in
June 2011, concluded her absence or removal was
advisable, and in July, Mr. Goldwater began legal
action against her. According to Mr. Goldwater, all two
dozen employees volunteered to supply affidavits
bemoaning Ms. Silberkleit’s conduct; Ms. Silberkleit
termed that proof of a Machiavellian palace coup
engineered by Mr. Goldwater.After a series of court
rulings against Ms. Silberkleit that included a $500 fine
— for violating the temporary restraining order by twice
showing up at the office in mid­-December with a
former football player in tow — and responsibility for
$59,000 in legal expenses accrued by the company,
last month the hostile parties agreed to take their
problems to mediation. Ms. Silberkleit’s 50 percent
share of the company is not in jeopardy, but her job
may be.
“The judge was very much against Nancy’s case,” Mr.
Simmons, Ms. Silberkleit’s lawyer, said. “Mr. Goldwater
defamed her, and Judge Kornreich has gone along
with it. But the judge didn’t go to the length of removing
Nancy as C.E.O., although that’s basically what
Goldwater and his lawyer have been asking for.”
Although Ms. Silberkleit testified that she brought the
former football player, Howard Jordan, to the office to
help her with an antibullying­-themed comic book, the
employees testified that he intimidated the accounting
and art departments merely by his unsanctioned
presence. It was the company’s position that Ms.
Silberkleit was using the unsuspecting Mr. Jordan as
“muscle.”
In her testimony, Ms. Silberkleit denied ever
mistreating her fellow Archie employees: “I’m the one
being harassed and abused there.”
Besides becoming what Mr. Simmons called “a
persona non grata” in the industry, where she no
91