Metro Racism

By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org. Posted January 10, 2005.

On April 4-6, 2003, officials of the Metro International newspaper chain held a sales conference near Rome. Top executives of all the nearly two dozen Metro newspapers were there – the managing directors (i.e. publishers), along with sales directors, editors and others. The annual corporate event, complete with lavish food, open bar and costly entertainment, is meant to celebrate sales and motivate managers for the next year.

At the Saturday night gala dinner, tradition has it that someone at each table sing a song or tell a joke before dessert, as a means of breaking the ice and helping everyone bond.

"Each table identified its top talent," one attendee remembered recently. "The idea was to provide a little entertainment."

But according to several former Metro executives who were at the gala, the festivities turned suddenly and shockingly sour when Steve Nylundh, the global newspaper chain's leading North America executive, took his turn. John Wilpers, then-editor of Boston Metro, explains.

"There were 15 or 20 tables," Wilpers recalls. "Each had put together a little presentation, and Nylund was chosen to represent his."

"I will tell a joke," Nylund announced from the front of the room.

Nylund's "joke" came in the form of a toast that centered on the length of the sexual organs of black males, whom he referred to as "niggers."

"It concerned the depth of a pool of water and the length of their penises," Wilpers says.

"Nylund began by saying, 'There were two niggers standing by a pool, and they took their dicks out,'" another participant recalls. "He went on about how one said the pool was too cold, and the other said it was too deep. I wanted to crawl under the table."

"All the Americans and the southern Europeans gasped," says Wilpers. "Someone at my table said, 'I can't believe he said that!' But the Nordics all laughed."

Wilpers says such crudely racist "humor" was common at Metro when he worked there – but usually not in public. "There were often jokes made in private by the northern Europeans. The corporate culture encouraged it. The company is run by people who are racist and ugly."

Other former Metro executives who attended the gala echo Wilpers' assessment. "I was sitting at a table with the Czechs and Hungarians," one told me. "I was shocked at what I heard. Quiet just fell over the entire room. No one knew what to say."

"I fell off my chair," another said. "The mentality there is shocking."

"When I left, I asked some of the Europeans if it had been as shocking to them as to us Americans," one attendee told me. "They said, 'Absolutely!'"

"It's bizarre and unbelievable," he concluded. "The people who run Metro are NOT stupid – you would think that even if they were that racist they wouldn't say it in public!"

Incredibly, the racist joking did not end at the dinner near Rome. A few months later, a similar incident took place at a dinner the Metro chain held on August 29th at a Hilton hotel in Stockholm. Once again the affair was attended by top Metro executives, along with others from television stations and networks owned by the Kinnevik Corporation, the multi-billion-dollar holding company behind the Metro Group.

Hans-Holger Albrecht, a member of Metro Newspapers Board of Directors, as well as president and CEO of Modern Times Group, the former corporate parent of Metro, was Master of Ceremonies for the gala evening. Perhaps in reference to Nylund's joke a few months earlier in Rome, Albrecht began the festivities by saying "Good evening, ladies, gentlemen and niggers."

Cristina Stenbeck, heir to Kinnevik founder Jan Stenbeck and a member of the Metro board of directors, was in attendance at both functions – at Rome she sat at the table directly next to Nylundh's – but had no negative reaction.

"Cristina was there and did nothing," one former Metro executive recalls. "The next day, however, the CEO did make a joke about Steve's 'affirmative action' program."

The shocking dinner 'humor' is only one indication of an apparently crude corporate culture of racism and discrimination at the Metro chain. Other employees at Boston Metro have formally charged the corporation with racist practices, and filed complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. C. C. Lee, a former sales representative, charged he was the victim of a "racially motivated" salary cutback, and told me "the culture of the company" is racist.

"Racism is always an element," Lee says. "They made racist innuendo, and comments like 'Blacks smoke crack.' That's their corporate culture."

Other employees also complain that Metro is sexist as well as racist. One woman said the company was "male-dominated" and that it was difficult for women to "go anywhere in the company" – it's only men, and mostly white." She also told of an advertisement that was turned down by Philadelphia Metro because "the paper did not want it to look like its readers needed food stamps" and didn't want to send "the wrong message' to its advertisers." Instead, she said, "the paper wanted its readers to appear young, professional, upwardly mobile and white collar."

This and other articles by Rory O'Connor are available on his blog.

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