Times Newsroom Employees Vote to Accept New Contract

After 21 months of protracted negotiations between The New York Times and the union representing newsroom staff, members of the union voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday afternoon to ratify a contract.

The contract provides members with a one-time 3 percent bonus, 2 percent raises in each of the next three years and possible modest incentive payments starting in 2014.

The current pension plan will be frozen at the end of this year and replaced by an Adjustable Pension Plan overseen by Times and union representatives, assuming that the new plan, which seeks to share risk between the employer and employees, wins the approval of the Internal Revenue Service. The old pension will be fully funded by The Times through payments over the next several years. The Times will increase payments to the health-care fund and increase dental benefits, as well.

By Tuesday, 472 print employees voted in favor of the contract while 43 voted against and one employee abstained. O n the digital side, 49 employees voted for the contract while 21 employees were against the plan. While the print and digital sides of the newspaper have been combined in practice for years, the agreement officially combines both sides.

Grant Glickson, chair of The New York Times unit of the Newspaper Guild of New York, said he was pleased with the vote.

“For the first time, our members will have a bonus plan that upper management receives,” he said. “It's nowhere near as generous. But it's the same structure and the same goals for both sides.”

The Times did not release a statement.

During the months of negotiations, members of the newsroom staff staged three separate protests to share their concerns about the lack of progress in negotiations. These protests included a silent action in which workers gathered as top editors headed into the newspaper's editorial meeting and a brief walk-out. Staff members also gathered in the building's lobby to take a photograph to give to Mark Thompson, the incoming chief executive of The New York Times Company. Mr. Thompson started working on Monday.

On Oct. 10, The Times and the union agreed to work with a mediator, Marty Scheinman. A preliminary agreement was reached by Oct. 28 just before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast.

Members of the union attended informational sessions last week and shared impassioned e-mails about whether to vote for the contract. Many seasoned reporters who devoted their careers to the newspaper expressed the fear that the latest contract could hurt the generous pensions they counted on in retirement. Many younger reporters with less tenure said they never expected pensions in the first place.

Mr. Glickson said that this contract galvanized staff to start planning for the next contract in three years.

“It's comforting and it makes us feel we have the backing of our membership,” he said.

Leader of Largest Unit of Interpublic Group Is Replaced, as Rumors Had Predicted

The widespread speculation that the Interpublic Group of Companies was planning to replace the leader of its largest division, the McCann Worldgroup, has turned out to be true, as rumors on Madison Avenue so often do.

Interpublic said on Tuesday afternoon that it had replaced Nick Brien, chairman and chief executive at the McCann Worldgroup since early 2010, with Harris Diamond, chairman and chief executive of another Interpublic division, the Constituency Management Group. Constituency Management oversees agencies like Weber Shandwick and FutureBrand, which handle tasks like public relations and brand identity consulting.

The change is effective immediately and, in keeping with the speculation that Interpublic executives had been dissatisfied with Mr. Brien for some time, a news release about the change devoted almost no attention to him and omitted the typical boilerplate that he was “leaving to pursue other interests.”

Nor was Mr. Brien - who le d the Interpublic media division, Mediabrands, before he took over the McCann Worldgroup - thanked for his services.

Under Mr. Brien, the McCann Erickson Worldwide unit of the McCann Worldgroup, which creates advertising campaigns for marketers, lost many high-profile clients like Exxon Mobil and Hewlett-Packard. There was also churn among senior managers, a significant decline in revenue and difficulties in landing new accounts.

On Tuesday afternoon, Interpublic also announced significant changes at McCann Erickson Worldwide, centered on the promotion of two executives, Luca Lindner and Gustavo Martinez, who will add major duties and join Mr. Diamond in a three-person office of the chairman at the McCann Worldgroup.

The trade publication Advertising Age, in an article this week, said, quoting unnamed “insiders,” that it would be surprising if Mr. Brien “wasn't gone by the start of 2013.”

Speculation about Mr. Brien's fate intensified last week when an article in The Wall Street Journal, quoting an unnamed “person familiar with the situation,” said that Interpublic executives were considering replacing Mr. Brien, perhaps “by the end of the year.”

The article described a possible effort to hire “a top executive from a rival ad agency” to replace Mr. Brien, but did not identify the executive. The shifting of Mr. Harris to the McCann Worldgroup may mean that the effort did not bear fruit.

Mr. Diamond was praised in the news release by Michael I. Roth, chairman and chief executive at Interpublic, who described Mr. Diamond as someone who “understands the business needs of global C.E.O.'s across a range of industries” and “has a proven track record of effectively managing a portfolio of agencies and growing the top line.”

Mr. Lindner and Mr. Martinez were named co-presidents for global brands at the McCann Worldgroup in March in a shift that was seen at the time as an attempt to help Mr. Brien with the care and feeding of clients. The two executives will now also have “full oversight of” McCann Erickson Worldwide, the news release said.

They will also continue to divide the oversight of large geographic regions in which the McCann Worldgroup does business, including the Americas, Europe and the Middle East.

Also, Andy Polansky, who had been president at Weber Shandwick, becomes chief executive, succeeding Mr. Diamond, who had also held that post in addition to his post as chairman and chief executive of the Interpublic agency group that includes Weber Shandwick.

The agency group that Mr. Diamond had led will now report directly to Interpublic executives.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

Accuser Recants Allegation Against Elmo Puppeteer

5:29 p.m. | Updated The man who accused Kevin Clash, the voice and puppeteer of the “Sesame Street” character Elmo, of an underage sexual relationship has recanted that claim, his lawyer said on Tuesday. The reversal came one day after the claim was first published by the gossip Web site TMZ.

Mr. Clash has taken a leave of absence from Sesame Workshop, the organization that produces “Sesame Street,” to challenge the allegations.

Andreozzi & Associates, a law firm that said it represented the accuser said in a statement that “he wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship.” The statement added, “He will have no further comment on the matter.”

The accuser's identity has not been disclosed.

Mr. Clash said through a spokeswoman: “I am relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest. I will not discuss it further.”

Sesam e Workshop had no immediate comment on when Mr. Clash would return to work. But the organization said in a statement Tuesday afternoon, “We are pleased that this matter has been brought to a close, and we are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode.”

On Monday, TMZ said that the accuser, now 24 years old, contacted Sesame Workshop last summer and claimed that, beginning at the age of 16, he had a sexual relationship with Mr. Clash.

The news threw one of the most trusted preschool properties into turmoil as Sesame Workshop moved quickly to protect its “Sesame Street” brand, estimated by Forbes to be worth more than $500 million.

Officials at Sesame Workshop said that they thoroughly investigated the accusation, using outside investigators, over several months and believe it to be false. Mr. Clash's leave was granted Sunday after it became clear that the Web site TMZ was planning to run an article about the accusation.

Mr. Clash said in a statement on Monday that the relationship “was between two consenting adults” - something that the accuser seemed to admit on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Clash has achieved a measure of fame outside the show as the star of the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey.” The episode led to Mr. Clash coming out as a gay man, something he had not previously said in public. “I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it, but felt it was a personal and private matter,” he said in the statement.

Brian Stelter writes about television and digital media. Follow @brianstelter on Twitter and facebook.com/brianstelter on Facebook.

Turner Classic\'s Film Festival Gains a Sponsor

The Turner Classic Movies cable channel has added a fourth sponsor to the ranks of the marketers that will serve as partners for the channel's fourth annual film festival.

The Citi credit and debit cards offered by Citibank have been signed as the “official card” for the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, to be held in Hollywood from April 25 through 28.

Citibank joins three returning sponsors: Vanity Fair magazine, Verizon and Bonhams, the auction house. Terms of the agreements are not being disclosed.

The Citi sponsorship is part of what Citi calls its Private Pass program, which offers cardholders advance access to events. In this case, Citi cardholders will be able to order passes two day s ahead of the official on-sale day of Thursday.

Private Pass is about “diversity of access” as well as access, said Ralph Andretta, head of co-brands and loyalty for the Citi cards unit of Citibank in Long Island City. “It's not just about music, sports and food” events, he said, “it's also about classic movies.”

Mr. Andretta described himself as a fan of classic films and TCM, adding that he watched “From Here to Eternity” on the channel on Monday night.

In addition to the pre-sale offer, attendees who use Citi cards to buy their passes will receive “a collectible gift” upon arriving there, Mr. Andretta said.

Citibank and TCM are discussing the possibility of hosting, before the festival begins, a preview party for about 100 Citi cardholders, Mr. Andretta said, which would feature Ben Mankiewicz, who shares with Robert Osborne the duties of introducing the movies shown by TCM. (Mr. Mankiewicz wi ll also introduce films and events during the festival; Mr. Osborne will be the host of the festival.)

Citi and Verizon are also sponsors of some movie screening events around the country that are part of the annual TCM Road to Hollywood series, which precedes the festival.

Sponsorships of events put on by TCM enable marketers to affiliate themselves with the channel, which does not run conventional paid commercials during its programming. TCM is the only major basic cable channel devoted to movies that is commercial-free; channels like IFC and Sundance, which were once commercial-free, now run commercials.

For 2013, there will be a “huge digital push” for the festival, said Dennis Adamovich, senior vice president for digital, affiliate, lifestyle and enterprise commerce for TCM and two other cable channels, TBS and TNT, that like TCM are part of the Turner Broadcasting System unit of Time Warner.

In addition to content that will be available on tcm.com, the TCM Web site, Mr. Adamovich said, there will also be an app for film fans who “can't be there” at the festival.

Among the events at the festival with sponsor participation, Vanity Fair will help present an after-party that will follow the opening night screening of a restored version of “Funny Girl.” Bonhams will take part in several ways, including an evaluation of memorabilia and other items for select pass holders.

TCM plans to announce around Jan. 1 the names of the film stars who will take part in the festival. The theme of the 2013 festival is “Cinematic Journeys: Travel in the Movies.”

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

Rick Sanchez to Join News Team at MundoFox

Donna Svennevik/ABC Rick Sanchez, formerly of CNN, is joining Noticias MundoFox.

Rick Sanchez, the former CNN news anchor, will join the national news team of MundoFox, the newest Spanish-language network in the United States.

Mr. Sanchez, who is bilingual, will contribute daily segments to the network in Spanish and will also host several news specials a year. He will be based in Miami.

Before making the move to Noticias MundoFox, Mr. Sanchez had been a contributor to Fox News and Fox News Latino, the English-language Web site that creates content for American Latinos. Mr. Sanchez anchored the election night coverage online for Fox News Latino, whi ch was in Spanish.

“I'm excited about MundoFox especially because MundoFox is really about the conversation that we've had about reaching out to that highly interactive first-, second- and third-generation Latino who resides in the United States and who, for the most part, have not been represented in the dissemination of news in the Unites States,” Mr. Sanchez said in an interview.

Mr. Sanchez, a very active user of Twitter, said he hoped to use the platform in his new role. “We want to make sure that we were not just talking to viewers but allowing viewers to talk back,” he said.

Mr. Sanchez, who has been a vocal critic of the lack of diversity in the news media, said he considered the rates of diversity today “somewhere in between weak and deplorable.”

A report on news staffing released by the Radio Television Digital News Association in 2012 found that while the percentage of minorities in the United States population had increased by more than 10 points during the last 22 years, the percentage of minorities working in television news had increased 3.7 points, and less than 1 percentage point in radio. “If you turn on the news, anywhere on any channel you'd be hard pressed to find us,” Mr. Sanchez said.

“I still believe it's very important to include Latino perspectives and to have representations of Latinos when it comes to news,” he said. “The things that we offer are the very things that can keep us from having the catch-up conversations that we are having today about the election,” Mr. Sanchez said, referring to the coverage in both English and Spanish news outlets about how more than 70 percent of Hispanics voted for Barack Obama.

In 2010, Mr. Sanchez was fired from CNN after he commented during a radio interview that Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, was a bigot and that “everybody that runs CNN is a lot like Stew art.”

Days after he was fired, Mr. Sanchez apologized for his remarks saying he had “screwed up” in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of “Good Morning America”

“I said some things that I shouldn't have said,” Mr. Sanchez told Mr. Stephanopoulos in the interview. “And they were wrong. Not only were they wrong, they were offensive.”

In August, MundoFox, a partnership between Fox International Channels, owned by the News Corporation, and RCN Television in Colombia made its debut in 50 cities in the United States, including Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

The network is vying for a share of the growing population of more than 50 million Latinos in the United States. Univision is the dominant player of the trio, with Telemundo a distant second.

When asked whether it made sense to add a third Spanish-language television network to the mix, Mr. Sanchez said: “The audience is big enough. The numbers bear that out. If we can handle however many English language stations in the United States, we can certainly have three solid Spanish speaking stations.”

Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.

Michael Eisner Announces a Film Deal With Universal

Fred Prouser/Reuters Michael D. Eisner

Take two - three? - on Michael D. Eisner's movie career.

Mr. Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company and, before that, president of Paramount Pictures, on Tuesday announced a film deal with Universal Pictures. Mr. Eisner's seven-year-old company, Tornante, will produce an unspecified number of films to be sold globally by Universal.

Tornante operates a cluster of media properties, including Vuguru, a digital studio focused on making original content for platforms like Hulu and AOL, and the Topps Company, the sports card creator and marketer. Mr. Eisner has spent recent months quietly raising money for a film production fund and hop es to have a movie in the marketplace by 2015.

Along with animated hits like “The Lion King,” highlights from Mr. Eisner's time at Disney include the creation of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series; Mr. Eisner worked on blockbusters like “Grease” and “Beverly Hills Cop” while at Paramount.

Brooks Barnes writes about Hollywood with an emphasis on Disney. Follow @brooksbarnesnyt on Twitter.

New Top Editor at Washington Post: Marcus Brauchli to Be Replaced by Marty Baron

David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe Marty Baron, the new editor of The Washington Post.

The Washington Post, facing steep financial challenges and striving to find profitability as readers abandon print papers for digital formats, changed its newsroom leadership Tuesday.

The Post announced that Marcus Brauchli, its executive editor for the past four years, will be stepping aside, but remaining with the company. Marty Baron, the 58-year-old editor of The Boston Globe, will replace Mr. Brauchli, and will take over, effective Jan. 2.

Mr. Brauchli joined The Post in 2008 after leaving The Wall Street Journal several months after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Under Mr. Brauchli's stewardship, The Post won four Pulitzer Prizes.

The change in leadership comes at a time when The Washington Post, like many newspapers, has been struggling on many fronts. As Post readers have shifted their reading from print to online, the company has suffered from declining advertising revenue and steady circulation drops in recent years.

Revenue at its newspaper-publishing division revenue dropped by 4 percent, to $137.3 million, in the third quarter, largely because of a decline in advertising. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, The Post's circulation from Monday through Friday declined to 507,615 in March, compared with 698,116 in 2007. The company has already started laying off staff in departments like advertising and the technology team to stem losses.

The paper also faces fresh competition from online news outlets like Politico, which was co-founded by former Washington Post reporters. The Post Compan y's news division also can no longer depend on Kaplan, its college and test preparation business, to help supplement its losses.

But the company's larger, industry-wide, problems have been made worse by internal tension between Katharine Weymouth, the paper's publisher and granddaughter of Katharine Graham, and Mr. Brauchli, whom she hired in May of 2008. Mr. Brauchli was quickly criticized by members of the newsroom, who described him as more distant than his predecessors like Leonard Downie and Benjamin Bradlee.

Katherine Frey/The Washington Post Marcus Brauchli, the outgoing editor of The Post, will remain with t he company.

Ms. Weymouth and Mr. Brauchli's relationship chilled as she pushed him to make newsroom cuts that Mr. Brauchli was uncomfortable with, according to people in the newsroom familiar with the discussions.

Ms. Weymouth told journalists at public events this past summer that she wanted to remove Mr. Brauchli, people familiar with those discussions said. But her uncle, Donald Graham, the company's chairman, stepped in and advised her to try to work things out, these people said. Mr. Graham in an interview last month praised Mr. Brauchli.

Discussions between Ms. Weymouth and Mr. Brauchli broke down again in recent weeks when Mr. Brauchli brought to her a newsroom budget that incorporated the cuts she asked for; despite that, she rejected it, according to a person in the newsroom familiar with the discussions. And while Mr. Brauchli was in the newsroom on election night, he also agreed to bring in Len Downie, the former executive editor, to ove rsee the election coverage, as Mr. Downie had done in 2008.

Mr. Downie denied that he had been asked to serve as interim editor and said his responsibilities only involved the election night coverage. “Nobody has asked me to do anything else,” he said.

Mr. Baron has overseen The Globe since 2001, and during this tenure the paper won six Pulitzer Prizes. Mr. Baron previously was executive editor of The Miami Herald and worked as a senior editor at The New York Times. Earlier in his career, he also worked for The Los Angeles Times.

While the news of Mr. Brauchli's imminent departure has generated much chatter within the newspaper industry, it has apparently meant little to the readers who still faithfully turn to The Post to get information and analysis.

Sean Gibbons, vice president of communications for the centrist research organization Third Way, and a former CNN producer, said that while he received most of his election night coverage via Twitte r, he made sure to read The Washington Post the day after for the insights of some of its reporters and columnists.

“The Post still holds the advantage of being the sort of grande dame of Washington,” said Mr. Gibbons. “It's been there. It's still an institution.”