QUILLBLOG

No tears shed for Regan

The abrupt-but-not-shocking firing of Judith Regan, the mastermind behind, among many other things, the O.J. Simpson “confessional” If I Did It, has not exactly brought forth a wave of admiring tributes for the bottom-feeding publisher. As many have pointed out, however, Regan was not ousted for crossing a line with the O.J. book, but for earning her parent companies, HarperCollins U.S. and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, so much bad press, and for badmouthing her bosses after the decision to kill the book was made.

Here’s media columnist David Carr in Monday’s New York Times:

No one woke up Friday morning and discovered that Ms. Regan had bad, if lucrative, taste. But when her O. J. Simpson deal went south, she refused to go away quietly even though Mr. Murdoch had already taken a bullet, then continued to complain that she was being undermined long after the story had quieted down.The News Corporation had profited handsomely from Ms. Regan’s tendency to shoot from the hip, but when she started firing inside the corral, well then, that was another matter.

Kicking a little more dirt on the grave is political blogger Atrios, who digs up some of Regan’s choicer quotes about the American culture of “amorality.”

Related links:
Read David Carr’s column
Read Atrios’s selection of Regan’s quotes