Why is The Bee picking on Rick Mirigian?
Why was the fact that a local concert promoter missed a loan payment considered newsworthy enough to run an article about it in the Bee? Will we be seeing regular articles on other businessmen when they miss a loan or credit card payment? What about late water or PG&E bills? Here we have a local man who is a great success story, and I see no purpose in stating he may have missed a loan payment (supposedly unrelated to concert promotion) other than to make some people believe he is somehow crooked. I would bet at least half of us have missed a loan payment at least once in our lives.....give the man a break.Greg Wike
Interesting question. Thanks for asking. First, I must point out that Rick Mirigian didn't just miss a payment -- he was sued. Still, the lawsuit was routine, and normally we wouldn't have bothered reporting it ... except that we had just published on the front page Mike Osegueda's enormous profile of Mirigian, the promoter of last week's big Beyoncé concert. That story made the lawsuit temporarily more relevant than it otherwise would be.
And, to answer your question directly, yes, we might write about another business owner missing a payment, if the circumstances made it of particular interest to readers. Say, for example, that business owner also was running for office on a platform of fiscal responsibility.
By the way, a couple of readers had exactly the opposite complaint about our coverage of Mirigian: that our profile was essentially free publicity. I think it was appropriate because (a) he's a terrifically interesting character and (b) he's a rare local promoter able to play with the corporate big boys in promoting major touring shows. In addition, the story gave us a fascinating nuts-and-bolts look behind the scenes of a major concert.
But while we took pains to show Mirigian with warts and all in that profile, it would have been wrong not to give some attention to a lawsuit that very week accusing the promoter of failing to pay his debts. There is a certain justice to serving readers the bad news about Rick Mirigian along with the good.