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This Just In: Media

The 'Cereal Killer' comes to Harvard

By Dan Kennedy

Give Times Mirror CEO Mark "Cereal Killer" Willes credit. The most controversial executive in newspapering -- a man who scoffs at the time-honored separation of church (the newsroom) and state (the business side) -- will put himself on the firing line on Friday, May 22, during an all-day forum at Harvard University.

"The Separation of News and Business" is sponsored by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an organization founded in 1997 by Bill Kovach, curator of Harvard's Nieman Foundation, and Tom Rosenstiel, head of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Cosponsors of the forum are the WGBH David Kuhn Memorial Fund and the Boston Globe.

Willes, a former cereal-industry executive, was brought in to drive up Times Mirror's profit margins in 1995, which he accomplished by downsizing the chain's newspapers. Most notoriously, he shut down New York Newsday, a money-losing but critically acclaimed city edition of Newsday, which covers suburban Long Island. Last year Willes named himself publisher of the chain's flagship Los Angeles Times. He immediately vowed to break down the barriers between business and editorial, and hired business-side managers to work with the editors of each of the paper's sections.

In addition to Willes and Kovach, speakers will include Boston Globe editor Matt Storin, Globe publisher Ben Taylor, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, New England Cable News president Phil Balboni, and WGBH Educational Foundation president Henry Becton. The forum will be carried on live audio on the WGBH Web site (http://www.wgbh.org), and a summary will later be posted on the Committee of Concerned Journalists' Web site (http://www.journalism.org/concern).

The program, free and open to all, will be held at Harvard's Sanders Theatre starting at 9 a.m.