Why'd Ganzi Go? The Theories Abound
It's been a day since Victor Ganzi resigned as the CEO of Hearst. And still no one seems to be sure why he left exactly! The company released a vague statement which said the 18-year-vet departed because of his "irreconcilable policy differences with the Board of Trustees about the future direction of the company." But what really happened? Every media outlet seems to have a different account.
The Wall Street Journal claims that that Hearst's board, chaired by George Hearst Jr., was miffed that Ganzi hadn't been heeding its advice; it also suggested that Ganzi was peeved that Frank Bennack Jr., who served as Hearst's CEO until 2002, still had substantial sway at the company. (It was Bennack, incidentally, who groomed Ganzi to succeed him and will now fill in as CEO on an interim basis.)
For its part, the Times suggests that the board hadn't been wild about Ganzi's recent efforts to beef up its newspaper holdings, including as the company's $288 million investment in the ailing MediaNews Group newspaper chain. "The word had come from on high that they weren't doing enough getting into digital," a source told the paper. Tom Lowry and Jon Fine at Business Week offer up a third account which—similarly—claims the board was "grew increasingly frustrated with Ganzi over his strategy to take minority interests in outside companies, particularly technology outfits with large potential upsides, rather than making bigger bets, say company sources."
Ganzi himself isn't giving his side of the story for now, but maybe he'll write a tell-all magazine piece about it someday, although we're guessing it won't be published in Hearst-owned Esquire.