Article:

It's the Golden State's latest version of the Great Secession.

 Fed up by Sacramento's regulations and Southern California's political sway, residents in one rural Northern California county are taking steps to leave the state.

 The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted, 4-1, on Tuesday to pursue seceding from California, the Redding Record Searchlight reported. Proponents say Siskiyou should form a new state -- called Jefferson -- with other counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon they believe share similar interests.

 On Tuesday more than 100 people filled the supervisors' chambers, many of whom indicated support for the declaration, the Searchlight reported. When a speaker asked those in the audience who was in favor, "nearly every hand in the room was raised," the newspaper said.

 "Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights," said Happy Camp resident Gabe Garrison. "We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life."

 "The state of Jefferson is the place I want to raise my son," Kayla Brown said.

 Resident complaints include a lack of representation in Sacramento and insufficient attention to major issues for the county, such as water rights and a rural fire prevention fee, the Searchlight reported.

 "We have to have government that's local, understands our issues and has empathy," said Mark Baird, a rancher who the Searchlight said was heading the effort.

 Supervisor Marcia Armstrong cited restoration of limited government as one of the reasons she supported the declaration.

 "We also have this enormous bureaucracy of unelected officials making decisions for us," she said.

 Supervisor Ed Valenzuela, who chairs the board, was the only vote against the decision, the Searchlight said. He cited the oath he took upon his reelection to "uphold the Constitution and uphold the constitution of the state of California."

 "I signed on to work within the system I know," he said. "I don't like it, I don't agree with it all the time, but ... I did sign up for that and I will continue to do so."

 Neighboring counties, which would be invited to join Jefferson, are also weighing secession. Humboldt County Supervisor Rex Bohn told the Times-Standard that his board would probably meet to consider their options.

 "I was one of the people who thinks the state of Jefferson wasn't a bad idea," he told the newspaper. "There has been a total lack of respect of our water rights and the fire fee. Those things may not be important to the rest of the state, but it's important to us."

 Secession efforts within California date back to the 1800s. The most recent high-profile attempt came in 2011, when Riverside County officials weighed a proposal to pursue the establishment of "South California," which would have seen 13 counties leave the Golden State.

 [For the Record, 1:50 p.m. PDT Sept. 4: An earlier version of this post incorrectly attributed Humboldt County Supervisor Rex Bohn's comments on the state of Jefferson to the Redding Record Searchlight. They were made to the Times-Standard.]

 ALSO:

 Rim fire: Containment of Yosemite-area blaze at 80%

 YouTube video shows Long Beach police repeatedly striking suspect

 Girl, 7, wounded in car-to-car shooting in Palmdale; three in custody

 Twitter: @katemather | Google+

 kate.mather@latimes.com ||||| The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to support the county's split from the state of California.

 It's the first in a long series of steps to form the proposed state of Jefferson, which proponents of the effort say would bring representation to rural North State counties that currently are beholden to the whims of representatives of the more heavily populated Southern California and free them from burdensome state regulations.

 ”We have to have government that's local, understands our issues and has empathy” for those affected, said Mark Baird, a Scott Valley rancher who's also president for Scott Valley Protect Our Water and vice president of the Siskiyou Water User's Association.

 Baird is leading the charge to form a new state from rural counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon, though he certainly wasn't the only voice in support of the move.

 More than 100 people packed the supervisors' chambers Tuesday for the discussion on whether the county should issue a declaration that it wants to secede from the state. Nearly all those in attendance appeared to be for the move and about a dozen spoke in support of it.

 ”Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights,” said Gabe Garrison of Happy Camp. “We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life.”

 Among those in attendance was Erin Ryan, field representative for Rep.

 Advertisement

 Doug LaMalfa. When asked for the congressman's opinion, she said that she and other LaMalfa staff members supported the effort to secede, but she did not know LaMalfa's thoughts on it.

 She also said there's support for the split in Sacramento.

 The discussion also attracted members of groups from Shasta and Tehama counties who are looking for their own supervisors to pass similar declarations.

 ”It would be the only way I could see everyone coming together in a positive manner,” said Tom Moller of Red Bluff.

 Also there was Kayla Brown, a mother in her early 20s, who said she didn't want to raise her child in California.

 ”The state of Jefferson is the place I want to raise my son,” she said.

 At one point in the meeting a speaker asked for a show of hands from those in attendance who supported the split. Nearly every hand in the room was raised.

 And supervisors echoed much of that enthusiasm in their own comments.

 ”I haven't had one contact in regard to this issue, that's in opposition,” Supervisor Michael Kobseff said.

 Supervisor Marcia Armstrong said the issues were about regulation, restriction of rights, lack of representation, regionalism and restoration of limited government.

 ”We also have this enormous bureaucracy of unelected officials making decisions for us,” she said.

 Board Chair Ed Valenzuela was the sole vote against the declaration. He said he was elected to solve problems within the system.

 ”It comes down to because I took an oath. I took an oath when I ran for re-election, which I just did, and that was to uphold the Constitution, and uphold the constitution of the state of California,” he said. “And within that, and because knowing what it's like to be a minority, I know the value of having to work from the other side without the numbers and without support. I signed on to do that, I signed on to work within the system I know. I don't like it, I don't agree with it all the time but at the same token, I did sign up for that and I will continue to do so.”

 In August, county residents lobbied the board to consider separating from the state over a laundry list of complaints including a lack of representation in Sacramento for the Republican-majority county, issues pertaining to water rights and the rural fire prevention fee.

 If the county were to split from the state, any action taken today would be the first step in a long process that would require approval from the state Legislature and the U.S. Congress.

 Siskiyou County would also invite other neighboring counties in California and Southern Oregon to join in the effort to create a new state.

 The U.S. Constitution allows for the formation of new states, though land can't be taken from existing states without the consent of state and federal governments.

 Humboldt County 1st District Supervisor Rex Bohn said he can understand the frustration in Siskiyou County and that he tends to agree with most of the issues that were brought up by the board.

 ”I was one of the people who thinks the State of Jefferson wasn't a bad idea,” Bohn said. “There has been a total lack of respect in terms of our water rights and the fire fee. Those things may not be important to the rest of the state, but it's important to us. This is a major thing for everyone that lives rurally.”

 Bohn said the problem is that only 16 percent of the state is rural, and decisions in Sacramento are sometimes based on the needs or realities of more urban areas.

 ”It's kind of a drastic measure to get someone to listen to you, but I guess they feel like they're not getting heard,” he said.

 Bohn added that the Humboldt County supervisors will likely meet to discuss the issue.

 Humboldt County 3rd District Supervisor Mark Lovelace said he took the talk of secession as a statement of frustration.

 ”There has to be basic economic underpinnings to make a state work,” Lovelace said. “There is a certain romantic appeal and allure to the state of Jefferson, this entire idea of what could have been, but in reality it would not be good economically.”

 He said one of the problems with a rural county seceding is that the tax base starts small.

 ”Siskiyou is one of the largest counties with one of the smallest populations,” he said. “It is also full of state roads that they won't be able to maintain, and federal land.”

 Times-Standard staff writer Catherine Wong contributed to this report. |||||
What is a summary?

– Not a big fan of Southern California? Neither is Northern California, apparently. Supervisors in rural Siskiyou County voted 4-1 Tuesday in favor of seceding from the state, reports the Times-Standard. The county thinks state officials in Sacramento are too focused on the big metro areas of the south and thus want to form a state of its own—to be called Jefferson. Supporters want to invite other northern counties, and perhaps a few from Oregon, to join, too, notes the Los Angeles Times. ”We have to have government that's local, understands our issues, and has empathy,” says one local rancher. It's clearly a very long-shot bid, one that would eventually require the blessing of both the state legislature and the US Congress. Still, neighboring Humboldt County is expected to meet soon to consider the idea. (Meanwhile, some counties in Colorado want to form a new state of their own.)


Article:
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

 BP faces opposition from some shareholders for handing Chief Executive Bob Dudley a 20 percent increase in his total remuneration package for 2015 to $19.6 million. It may seem hard to square that amount with BP’s $5.2 billion loss last year, and the fact that it is slashing thousands of jobs in response to falling oil prices. But that’s actually the point. Managing an oil company when crude is trading at $100 per barrel is easy compared to the current environment. Instead, Dudley has to work harder than his predecessors.

 Dudley, whose pay was going to a non-binding shareholder vote on April 14, has done what was needed of him. His two big challenges were to clean up the financial spill from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster and change the culture at BP, which was tainted by safety concerns and excessive risk taking. Last year the company saw the number of recorded oil spills and employee injuries both at five-year lows.

 He has also delivered decent returns when compared to peers. BP ranks third among the big six oil majors, which include Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, in total shareholder returns over the last three years, according to Eikon data – even despite 2010’s rig blowout. Drawing a line under the environmental catastrophe last year by agreeing to pay up to $18.7 billion in penalties cleared the decks for the company to start rebuilding its balance sheet.

 Compared to counterparts, Dudley’s remuneration appears generous. Although Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden pocketed 24.2 million euros ($27.2 million) in 2014, this figure fell to 5.6 million euros last year, according to the company. Over the same period Dudley’s base salary has remained flat, with the biggest boost to his overall financial reward coming through his pension and deferred bonus shares.

 The mild-mannered American has had possibly the toughest job in the oil industry. His rewards look in line with that task. ||||| LONDON -- A leading shareholder advisory group has criticized BP PLC's decision to award its top directors their maximum bonuses for 2015, despite the company's lackluster performance, and recommended shareholders vote against the payment plans.

 Last month, BP announced that Chief Executive Bob Dudley would receive a 20% bump in his total compensation package in 2015. Though much of this increase related to U.K. reporting requirements that inflated the rise in Mr. Dudley's pension, the oil executive's cash bonus increased to $1.4 million from $1 million in 2014. His total bonus for the year, including a portion paid in deferred BP shares, amounted to $4.2 million. That was the maximum amount he was eligible to receive for the year and was up from $3 million in 2014. Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary also received 100% of his possible bonus.

 The awards follow a year in which the company lost $5.2 billion as oil prices plummeted. Since the start of 2016 it has announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs and has slashed spending to help manage the slump.

 "We believe shareholders should question whether payouts were fully earned in respect of the past fiscal year relative to the company's performance," proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis said in a March report seen by The Wall Street Journal.

 BP's compensation committee awards executive bonuses based on the company's performance in a number of strategic areas, including its safety record and internal targets for operational cash flow and underlying profits.

 "BP executives performed strongly in a difficult environment in 2015, managing the things they could control and for which they were accountable," a BP spokesman said, adding that "safety and operational risk performance was excellent and BP responded quickly and decisively to the drop in oil price."

 This isn't the first time Glass Lewis has raised objections to BP's executive pay. Last year, it also recommended that shareholders reject Mr. Dudley's pay package, noting that his compensation outpaced that received by chief executives at similar-sized firms "despite the company's relative underperformance." The executive's compensation was ultimately approved by around 86% of investors.

 BP's shareholders will vote on the matter this year at the company's annual general meeting in London on April 16, along with a host of other issues. Glass Lewis has also raised concerns about the company's proposal to reduce its notice period for calling a general meeting, but supports most of the proposals, including the re-election of Mr. Dudley and his board.

 Write to Sarah Kent at sarah.kent@wsj.com

 More from MarketWatch ||||| Angry shareholders mounted an unprecedented protest against BP on Thursday, rebelling against a 20 per cent pay rise for chief executive Bob Dudley despite the oil group making its worst ever loss.

 Investors voted against the company’s pay decisions for the first time in living memory, with 59 per cent of proxy votes cast going against BP’s decision to pay Mr Dudley nearly $20m for 2015, a year in which the company ran up a $5.2bn loss.

 It was the first time that a top British company was defeated over executive pay since shareholders at advertising group WPP and Xstrata, the mining company, rebelled four years ago during what was dubbed the “shareholder spring”. It left BP scrambling to win back support of some of the City’s biggest institutions.

 The rebellion highlighted a growing trend of institutional investors and advisers around the world taking a more aggressive stance over pay.

 Smith & Nephew, the FTSE 100 medical devices group, also suffered a defeat on their remuneration report on Thursday as 53 per cent of shareholders voted against the pay package of chief executive Olivier Bohuon. Although Mr Bohuon’s overall pay fell to $5.5m in 2015 compared with $6.8m in 2014, shareholders protested because the company allowed long-term incentives to vest despite falling below initial targets.

 US banks from Citigroup to Bank of America have faced pressure to toughen bonus “clawback” regimes, which put executives on the hook for future losses. A resolution demanding more details of JPMorgan’s clawback plans attracted 44 per cent support last year.

 Mr Dudley’s pay looked particularly out of line to shareholders because other major energy company bosses took pay cuts in 2015, a year when energy companies were hit hard by the oil price crash.

 According to ISS Corporate Solutions in the US, the median pay of an S&P 500 energy company chief executive, excluding their pension, fell by 1.8 per cent last year after four years of increases that ranged from 4.8 to 8.2 per cent.

 Lombard Shareholders get sniffy over Dudley’s pay City nostrils are twitching for the whiff of other corporate fat cats, writes Jonathan Guthrie.

 The BP vote results — which were non-binding — were announced at an occasionally mutinous annual general meeting in London, where several shareholders publicly criticised the Mr Dudley’s pay increase.

 Royal London Asset Management said after the vote: “The vote against the executive directors’ remuneration is extraordinary and shows a lack of discretion by BP’s board.”

 Some investors said Dame Ann Dowling, the head of the company’s remuneration committee, would have to consider her position.

 One senior corporate governance investor said: “The company has ignored warnings. They really need to get this right next time, or it could mean people will have to step down.”

 BP has already paid Mr Dudley, who took over as chief executive in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and other directors. It said after the meeting that none of the money would be paid back.

 The company defended the pay rise, saying Mr Dudley had met or exceeded every one of the targets he had been set. Those targets related to operational and safety measures such as the amount of cash generated, the number of major projects begun on time and the amount of oil and gas that was spilled.

 Lex Oil prices: owe you one Only higher prices will reduce crude producers’ high leverage

 But Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman, promised to review the terms on which pay is awarded in consultation with shareholders before next year.

 BP blamed the falling oil price and a $9.8bn charge to settle claims related to Deepwater Horizon for its loss, among other factors.

 Mr Svanberg told the meeting: “On remuneration, the shareholders’ reactions are very strong. They are seeking change in the way we should approach this in the future.

 “We hear you. We will sit down with our largest shareholders to make sure we understand their concerns and return to seek your support for a renewed policy.”

 Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “Investors are sending a clear message to executives on pay. They are saying enough is enough and you have gone too far.” ||||| Image copyright PA Image caption Bob Dudley took over as BP chief executive in the aftermath of the fatal Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion

 BP shareholders have rejected a pay package of almost £14m for chief executive Bob Dudley at the oil company's annual general meeting.

 Just over 59% of investors rejected Mr Dudley's 20% increase, one of the largest rejections to date of a corporate pay deal in the UK.

 The vote is non-binding on BP, but earlier, chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg promised to review future pay terms.

 Mr Dudley received the rise despite BP's falling profits and job cuts.

 Corporate governance adviser Manifest says the vote is at or above the fifth-largest in the UK against a boardroom remuneration deal.

 'Last chance saloon'

 In his opening address to the shareholders' meeting, before the vote had been formally announced, Mr Svanberg acknowledged the strength of feeling, saying: "Let me be clear. We hear you."

 He continued: "We will sit down with our largest shareholders to make sure we understand their concerns and return to seek your support for a renewed policy."

 "We know already from the proxies received and conversations with our institutional investors that there is real concern over the directors' pay in this challenging year for our shareholders.

 "On remuneration, the shareholders' reactions are very strong. They are seeking change in the way we should approach this in the future," he said.

 The Institute of Directors said the shareholder rebellion would "determine the future of corporate governance in the UK".

 "British boards are now in the last chance saloon, if the will of shareholders in cases like this is ignored, it will only be a matter of time before the government introduces tougher regulations on executive pay," said director general Simon Walker.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dudley's pay sends 'wrong message' investor says

 'Out of touch'

 Shareholders that criticised the pay deals included Aberdeen Asset Management and Royal London Asset Management.

 Investor group Sharesoc branded the pay deal "simply too high", while Glass Lewis, ShareSoc, Pirc and Institutional Shareholder Services have also expressed their opposition.

 Earlier on Thursday, Ashley Hamilton Claxton, corporate governance manager at Royal London, told the BBC: "The executives received the maximum bonuses possible in a year when [BP] made a record loss, and to us that just does not translate into very good decision-making by the board.

 "We think it sends the wrong message. It shows that the board is out of touch."

 She told the BBC's Today programme that if 20%-25% of shareholders vote down the pay deal, it would force BP to "think long and hard about their decision".

 The early voting figures suggest that the opposition is even bigger that she expected.

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Deepwater Horizon disaster forced BP to sell billions of dollars in assets to cover costs and compensation

 Analysis: Simon Jack, BBC business editor

 Giving someone a 20% pay rise for a year's work that saw BP record its biggest ever operating loss seems perverse even by chief executive pay standards.

 If it's any consolation, (I doubt it will be), bosses at Exxon and Chevron got paid even more than Bob Dudley even though the value of their companies fell by more than BP. That's the bit that sticks in the craw for many. Under what circumstances don't these guys get paid a fortune? It would be fine if some years you win, some years you lose - but they never seem to lose.

 We may get a rebellion of 20-30% of shareholders today but even if it was more than 50%, the board doesn't have to listen. Shareholders do have a binding vote every three years on the pay policy and formula. No use crying now, the formula that spat out £14m for Bob Dudley was approved in 2014 by 96% of shareholders.

 Read Simon's full blog here.

 BP's pay policy is subject to a binding shareholder vote every three years. It was last set in 2014, meaning new proposals are due to be put forward for shareholder approval again in 2017.

 'Surpassed expectations'

 Many experts argue that Mr Dudley is merely earning the market rate for international executives.

 Mark Freebairn, partner at recruitment firm Odgers Berndtson, told Today: "If Bob Dudley was to leave [BP] it would be for a competitive company and remuneration would be part of the discussion. If you operate in a global market, you have to operate on a global scale."

 BP was now in a far better position than when Mr Dudley took the helm, he said.

 After the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, BP's share price collapsed and it was forced to sell off assets worth billions of pounds to pay costs, fines and compensation.

 However, the collapse in the oil price over the past 18 months saw BP's profit tumble, and the company is axing another 3,000 jobs worldwide on top of the 4,000 cuts already announced.

 A spokesman for BP said before the meeting at London's ExCel centre had begun that shareholders had previously backed the pay formula.

 "Despite the very challenging environment, BP's safety and operating performance was excellent throughout 2015... BP's performance surpassed the board's expectations on almost all of the measures that determine remuneration - and the outcome therefore reflects this.

 "And these clear measures derive directly from BP's remuneration policy which was approved by shareholders at the 2014 AGM with over 96% of the vote," the spokesman said.

 Mr Dudley's pay package was less than that earned by some rivals in the oil and gas industry, including at Exxon and Chevron. But it was more than the award for Ben van Beurden, chief executive at Royal Dutch Shell, whose salary package fell from €24.2m (£19m) in 2014 to €5.58m last year.

 Experts point out, though, that it can be difficult to compare like-with-like. For instance, Mr van Beurden's 2014 pay involved one-off pension payments and "tax equalisation" measures when he moved from the UK to the Netherlands.

 And in 2015 Mr Dudley and Mr van Beurden received very different rewards under their long-term incentive plans, LTIPs. Shell gave its chief executive 8% of the LTIP, down from 49% in 2014. Mr Dudley's long-term bonus increased from 63.8% of maximum to 77.6%. ||||| A majority of BP PLC’s shareholders voted against the company’s executive pay policy, a stinging — though nonbinding — rebuke to Chief Executive Bob Dudley and his board.

 At the company’s annual meeting Thursday, the oil giant said preliminary results showed 59% of investors voting by proxy rejected the company’s executive compensation decisions for 2015. That included a controversial 20% increase in Dudley’s total pay for the year, at a time when the company lost $5.2 billion.

 Earlier in the day, the company also signaled in its clearest terms yet that the oil giant may have to reduce its dividend, as low oil prices continue to threaten the once-sacrosanct investor payouts across the industry.

 Both moves heap pressure on Dudley and his board, as they try to navigate low oil prices like the rest of the industry but also contend with increasing shareholder unease.

 BP BP., +0.88% BP, +0.60% Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, speaking to investors before the vote, defended the pay package, which he said was based on “exceptional” company performance during a difficult year. He said, before the vote, that the board would discuss possible changes to its compensation plan for next year.

 After the vote, Svanberg said that despite the nonbinding vote, the company wouldn’t adjust Dudley’s pay.

 An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com

 More from MarketWatch |||||Summary:

– Oil giant BP lost $5.2 billion last year, but the company somehow saw fit to propose maximum bonuses for 2015 for its top executives, including a 20% pay increase for CEO Bob Dudley—a proposal that 59% of shareholders roundly rejected by proxy vote at Thursday's annual meeting, MarketWatch reports. The company had indicated earlier in the day that it may also have to reduce its dividend, the Wall Street Journal reports. Dudley is set to receive the full bonus he was eligible for, which comes to $4.2 million (including $1.4 million in cash and a portion in deferred BP shares), per an earlier MarketWatch report. This amount was bumped up from the $3 million ($1 million in cash) he received in 2014. BP's CFO was also on the list to rake in his full bonus. "We think it sends the wrong message," a rep for shareholder Royal London Asset Management tells the BBC. "It shows that the board is out of touch." Not only did BP suffer straight-up monetary losses as the price of oil fell, it also announced it will be getting rid of about 7,000 jobs and taking other belt-tightening measures. And the Financial Times notes that other energy company execs saw their pay slashed in 2015. But a BP spokesman says "executives performed strongly in a difficult environment in 2015, managing the things they could control and for which they were accountable." Andy Critchlow, writing for the Reuters Breakingviews blog, agrees. "Dudley has to work harder than his predecessors," he writes, noting the CEO has helped the company recover from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and improved safety protocol. "The mild-mannered American has had possibly the toughest job in the oil industry. His rewards look in line with that task." Carl-Henric Svanberg, chairman of BP's board, says the nonbinding shareholder vote won't alter the payouts they've already decided on, but that the board will take investors' concerns into account when coming up with next year's compensation packages.


Thrasher magazine co-founder ID’d as suicide in front of Mission Police Station

 Eric Swenson, Craig Stecyk and Fausto Vitello, at the Independent foundry in San Francisco in 1983. (Photo by MoFo/www.thrashermagazine.com)

 Eric Swenson, Craig Stecyk and Fausto Vitello, at the Independent foundry in San Francisco in 1983. (Photo by MoFo/www.thrashermagazine.com)

 The man who ended his life in front of the Mission Police Station on Monday was a skateboarding icon and co-founder of San Francisco-based Thrasher magazine.

 Skaters worldwide are mourning the loss of Eric Swenson, 64, of Potrero Hill, whose local manufacturing and publishing ventures helped launch a massive and lasting subculture.

 Swenson shot himself around 8:30 a.m. without going inside the police station or talking to any officers. Loved ones believe the longtime San Franciscan's struggle with a debilitating motorcycle injury led to the suicide.

 A "very private person," Swenson may have chosen the police station to end his life in order to spare his loved ones from finding him, said Gwynn Vitello, Thrasher's publisher and wife of Swenson's business partner, the late Fausto Vitello.

 Related... Suicide reported in front of Mission Police Station Read More A person put a gun to his head and ended his life in front of Mission Police Station as passersby watched in horror Monday morning, police said. The victim, identified only as a white male, committed suicide around 8:30 a.m. at the station at 17th and Valencia streets. He used a high-caliber handgun and shot himself right in front of the station’s front doors.

 Swenson leaves behind his wife Linda and sister Rebekah, "along with a tremendous number of admirers," Thrasher magazine said in a statement.

 "Eric was not a person who wanted to burden anybody," Vitello said. "In my mind this was the most unselfish way he could do what he had to do."

 When he was about 20, Swenson severely injured his leg in a motorycle accident that kept him at Laguna Honda Hospital for more than a half year, Vitello said. Years of pain stemming from that injury might have become too overwhelming for Swenson, she said.

 "Toward the end, walking was kind of a struggle for him," Vitello said, who added that friends and loved ones can only speculate as to why he took his own life.

 Swenson co-founded High Speed Productions Inc., which includes magazines Thrasher, Juxtapoz and Slap. He also co-founded Independent Trucks in 1978, the manufacturer of skateboard trucks and other parts that helped launch the sport.

 Eben Sterling, advertising director for Thrasher and Slap, said Wednesday Independent Trucks marked a “sort of a BC/AD kind of event in skateboarding.”

 The skateboard trucks allowed people to skate vertically, which “moved skateboarding from the sidewalk to what it is today,” Sterling said. Skateboarders wouldn't have been able to scale pool surfaces without the high-performance technology, he added.

 Sterling, who has known Swenson for 18 years, said Thrasher magazine, started in 1981, helped establish skateboarding as a subculture.

 “Before Thrasher skateboarding was just another trend like yo-yos, rollerblades and Hula Hoops. But now it had its own music, dialect and it’s own fashion style,” Sterling said.

 Swenson’s partner in the skateboarding ventures was the more outgoing Fausto Vitello, the face of the company who passed away of a heart attack five years ago.

 Fausto and Swenson were motorcycle mechanics hell-bent on figuring out how to offer outlaw skaters more freedom on their boards. Fausto, who had at one point fixed motorycles for the police department, met a skateboarder who complained about the limitations of skateboard trucks at the time, Vitello said.

 "They did all of this on their own," said former professional skateboarder and musician Tommy Guerrero, whose known and worked with Swenson for years. "They figured it out, built it. These guys were just really hard workers."

 The pair manufactured the revolutionary skateboard trucks at a foundry in the Hunters Point Shipyard. The foundry, operated under the name Ermico Enterprises Inc., has since moved to 17th Street in Potrero Hill. They also began the distribution company Deluxe Distributions, which operates adjacent to Ermico Enterprises.

 The magazine side of the business was started as a way to advertize the skateboard products, Vitello said.

 Swenson was "a doer from the old school," Guerrero added. Though he wasn't a skater, "he was the guy who would pull out a wrench and fix it or make it. This was his whole approach to everything."

 Swenson was known as a behind the scenes workhorse.

 “He wasn’t into the glory or being in the spotlight,” Sterling said. "He was extremely successful, but was a humble guy that didn’t flaunt his wealth. He basically got up in the morning and went to work, and that was his passion."

 The skateboarding world took to social networking websites to pay tribute to Swenson.

 “R.I.P. Mr. Swenson, You and Fausto did so much for skateboarding! Love ya,” Steve Caballero declared on Facebook.

 maldax@sfexaminer.com ||||| Eric Swenson, skateboard business icon, dies

 Eric Swenson, co-founder of the skateboard magazine Thrasher, committed suicide June 20, 2011. Swenson was 64. The photo is undated. Eric Swenson, co-founder of the skateboard magazine Thrasher, committed suicide June 20, 2011. Swenson was 64. The photo is undated. Photo: Courtesy Thrasher Magazine Photo: Courtesy Thrasher Magazine Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Eric Swenson, skateboard business icon, dies 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

 SAN FRANCISCO -- Eric Swenson, an icon in the skateboarding culture and a co-founder of Thrasher magazine, died Monday in San Francisco. He was 64.

 Mr. Swenson helped reinvigorate the skateboarding scene after it languished in the late 1970s. In 1978, Mr. Swenson co-founded Ermico Enterprises, a San Francisco foundry that became closely associated with Independent Trucks, a manufacturer of skateboard equipment and accessories. Three years later, Mr. Swenson and his friends, Fausto Vitello and Kevin Thatcher, co-founded trendsetting Thrasher magazine.

 Independent Trucks manufactured a high-quality truck - the metal connector between the skateboard and its wheels - that enabled boarders to execute the moves necessary for jumps and tricks performed on rails and curbs.

 The articles and photos in Thrasher focused on this new generation of skateboarders and pushed the success of Independent Trucks by advertising its products.

 "People talk, but seldom act," the magazine said in a message on its website about Mr. Swenson's death. "Eric Swenson got things done. Never one to clamor for the spotlight, he preferred the hard work, orchestrating the show from behind the scenes. His mark on skateboarding is extraordinary."

 Michael Brooke, publisher of Concrete Wave, a skateboarding magazine based in Toronto, said Wednesday that Mr. Swenson was "one of the critical architects" of the revitalized art of skateboarding.

 "Eric Swenson is really one of those guys who drives things forward," Brooke said. "The funny thing about skateboarding is that, a lot of times, there are a lot more followers than there are visionaries. Eric, along with Fausto, were visionaries."

 Vitello died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 2006 while bike riding in Woodside.

 "Too many people who are involved in this industry seem to be taken from us at far too young an age," Brooke said.

 Vitello's widow, Gwynn Vitello, 61, of Hillsborough said Wednesday that Mr. Swenson was a private individual and "one of the most independent persons I've ever known. He was like John Wayne. He kept everything close to the vest. He did things because he believed in them. He was happiest when he was making things and building things and getting jobs for people."

 Mr. Swenson shot and killed himself in front of the Mission Police Station, according to police. Police said witnesses saw him walk to the front door of the police station on the outside and shoot himself.

 Mr. Swenson leaves behind his wife, Linda McKay, and sisters Rebekah Engle and Sonja Taylor, both of San Francisco. Services will be held privately. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The skateboarding world is mourning a man who played a major role in creating the huge subculture that exists today, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Thrasher magazine co-founder Eric Swenson shot and killed himself in front of the Mission police station in San Francisco. Friends believe the 64-year-old could no longer cope with the pain from a debilitating motorbike injury he suffered years ago, and chose the police station to spare loved ones from finding his body, reports the San Francisco Examiner. Swenson, an accomplished mechanic, helped revive the skateboarding scene in the late '70s with a company making skateboarding equipment, clothes, and accessories. He founded Thrasher in 1981 with his friend Fausto Vitello. "Before Thrasher, skateboarding was just another trend like yo-yos, rollerblades and hula hoops. But now it had its own music, dialect and its own fashion style," the magazine's ad director tells the Examiner.


News article:

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--21st Century Fox today issued the following statement announcing it has settled Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit.

 “21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit. During her tenure at Fox News, Gretchen exhibited the highest standards of journalism and professionalism. She developed a loyal audience and was a daily source of information for many Americans. We are proud that she was part of the Fox News team. We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve.”

 Ms. Carlson issued the following statement:

 “I am gratified that 21st Century Fox took decisive action after I filed my Complaint. I’m ready to move on to the next chapter of my life in which I will redouble my efforts to empower women in the workplace. I want to thank all the brave women who came forward to tell their own stories and the many people across the country who embraced and supported me in their #StandWithGretchen. All women deserve a dignified and respectful workplace in which talent, hard work and loyalty are recognized, revered and rewarded.”

 About 21st Century Fox

 21st Century Fox is the world's premier portfolio of cable, broadcast, film, pay TV and satellite assets spanning six continents across the globe. Reaching more than 1.8 billion subscribers in approximately 50 local languages every day, 21st Century Fox is home to a global portfolio of cable and broadcasting networks and properties, including FOX, FX, FXX, FXM, FS1, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, FOX Sports, Fox Sports Network, National Geographic Channels, STAR India, 28 local television stations in the U.S. and more than 300 international channels; film studio Twentieth Century Fox Film; and television production studios Twentieth Century Fox Television and a 50% ownership interest in Endemol Shine Group. The Company also holds a 39.1% ownership interest in Sky, Europe’s leading entertainment company, which serves 22 million customers across five countries. For more information about 21st Century Fox, please visit www.21CF.com. ||||| Gretchen Carlson | Getty Fox settles with Gretchen Carlson over sexual harassment claims Company will pay $20 million to settle suit

 21st Century Fox is settling a lawsuit brought by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, the company confirmed Tuesday morning. Terms of the settlement were not public, but Vanity Fair reported that it is for $20 million.

 "21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit," a statement from the company said. "During her tenure at Fox News, Gretchen exhibited the highest standards of journalism and professionalism. She developed a loyal audience and was a daily source of information for many Americans. We are proud that she was part of the Fox News team. We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect that she & all our colleagues deserve."

 Story Continued Below

 "I am gratified that 21st Century Fox took decisive action after I filed my Complaint," Carlson said in a statement. "I'm ready to move on to the next chapter of my life in which I will redouble my efforts to empower women in the workplace. I want to thank all the brave women who came forward to tell their own stories and the many people across the country who embraced and supported me in their #StandWithGretchen. All women deserve a dignified and respectful workplace."

 The former Fox News host sued former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes in July, alleging that he sexually harassed her and terminated her contract in retaliation. Ailes has denied the allegations, though after 21st Century Fox launched an investigation into the claims by Carlson and several other women, Ailes resigned from the company with a reported $40 million parachute.

 Now Fox News is settling the suit on Ailes' behalf, even though the company was not named as a defendant in the case. It isn't clear whether Ailes will be paying a portion of it.

 According to Vanity Fair, the settlement will come with a public apology to Carlson on behalf of Fox, which is also reportedly in talks with two other women for their own settlements.

 Though a settlement was never off the table, Carlson and her team indicated early on that that wasn't their ultimate goal.

 "We haven’t discussed a settlement with our client or anything because no one has raised it. This is about more than money. Gretchen is standing up for something really important to her, it’s something that’s been a hallmark of her career,” Carlson's lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith told POLITICO in July, noting Carlson's work with victims of domestic violence, on sexual harassment and women empowerment. "It’s important for her to stand up for women right now.”

 Allan Ripp, a spokesman for Carlson and her legal team said they had no comment in response to the settlement report or to questions as to why Carlson would agree to settle.

  ||||| Fox Host Greta Van Susteren Defends Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, Says Gretchen Carlson's Sexual Harassment Allegations Don't 'Have Any Ring of Truth'

 RELATED VIDEO: Fox News Anchor Gretchen Carlson Sues CEO Roger Ailes for Alleged Sexual Harassment and Retaliation

 Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is surprised by her former colleague Gretchen Carlson 's sexual harassment allegations against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Speaking to PEOPLE about the situation, Van Susteren, who has been at the network for 15 years, admits she's never had an inappropriate encounter with Ailes and originally considered Carlson's allegations as those of a bitter employee."Of course, the first thing that occurred to me is that, unfortunately, we have a disgruntled employee, a colleague," she says. "I read that her show wasn't being renewed and , being a lawyer, I thought she got angry. I deal with Roger Ailes often. I've often been alone with Roger Ailes in his office over the course of 15 years and I've never seen anything like what I'm reading about in the papers and the magazine."Although Van Susteren's relationship with Carlson was limited to co-reporting on Prince William and Princess Kate's 2011 wedding, a few appearances on The Real Story and "a cup of coffee or a drink or something," Van Susteren believes that sexual harassment claims would have traveled throughout the company."People come to me because I've been there so long," she says. "That's why this doesn't have any ring of truth to me. I would have heard it. People don't keep things silent."Regarding the claims that Ailes sabotaged Carlson's career because she refused sexual advances and complained about sever and pervasive sexual harassment, Van Susteren says that she found them odd considering Ailes "was first to put a woman in primetime," meaning Catherine Crier.Van Susteren adds that "most people, man or woman, would give anything to have had the air time [Carlson] had on Fox & Friends", and would have viewed her move to the 2 p.m. time slot as a "huge promotion" since it provided Carlson with her own hour, her own name-brand show and the freedom to "produce and do what she wanted."Van Susteren also described Ailes as "the king of cable," adding that although it's not always a perfect, she's enjoyed a "very professional and very successful" working relationship with her boss."If Roger Ailes were how he's described, there's no way I would've stuck around. I don't feel like putting up with that stuff and I wouldn't," she says. "Even if he weren't doing it to me, I wouldn't want to work in that environment. I sort of feel bad for Gretchen Carlson because it's sort of a weird thing that she's done. What she's alleging is something that is alien to me. I've never heard it."On Wednesday, Carlson filed a lawsuit against Ailes, alleging that he "has unlawfully retaliated against Carlson and sabotaged her career because she refused sexual advances and complained about severe pervasive sexual harassment."The lawsuit includes Carlson's Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy, whom she claims "regularly treat[ed] her in a sexist and condescending way" when they worked together.Ailes responded to the allegations in a statement – obtained by PEOPLE – in which he calls the claims "retaliatory.""Gretchen Carlson's allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network's decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup," the statement reads. "When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit."The statement continued: "Ironically, FOX News provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11-year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book. This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously." ||||| It took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers. That the place turned out to be rife with grotesque abuses of power has left even its liberal critics stunned. More than two dozen women have come forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment, and what they have exposed is both a culture of misogyny and one of corruption and surveillance, smear campaigns and hush money, with implications reaching far wider than one disturbed man at the top.

 It began, of course, with a lawsuit. Of all the people who might have brought down Ailes, the former Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson was among the least likely. A 50-year-old former Miss America, she was the archetypal Fox anchor: blonde, right-wing, proudly anti-intellectual. A memorable Daily Show clip showed Carlson saying she needed to Google the words czar and ignoramus. But television is a deceptive medium. Off-camera, Carlson is a Stanford- and Oxford-educated feminist who chafed at the culture of Fox News. When Ailes made harassing comments to her about her legs and suggested she wear tight-fitting outfits after she joined the network in 2005, she tried to ignore him. But eventually he pushed her too far. When Carlson complained to her supervisor in 2009 about her co-host Steve Doocy, who she said condescended to her on and off the air, Ailes responded that she was “a man hater” and a “killer” who “needed to get along with the boys.” After this conversation, Carlson says, her role on the show diminished. In September 2013, Ailes demoted her from the morning show Fox & Friends to the lower-rated 2 p.m. time slot.

 Carlson knew her situation was far from unique: It was common knowledge at Fox that Ailes frequently made inappropriate comments to women in private meetings and asked them to twirl around so he could examine their figures; and there were persistent rumors that Ailes propositioned female employees for sexual favors. The culture of fear at Fox was such that no one would dare come forward. Ailes was notoriously paranoid and secretive — he built a multiroom security bunker under his home and kept a gun in his Fox office, according to Vanity Fair — and he demanded absolute loyalty from those who worked for him. He was known for monitoring employee emails and phone conversations and hiring private investigators. “Watch out for the enemy within,” he told Fox’s staff during one companywide meeting.

 Taking on Ailes was dangerous, but Carlson was determined to fight back. She settled on a simple strategy: She would turn the tables on his surveillance. Beginning in 2014, according to a person familiar with the lawsuit, Carlson brought her iPhone to meetings in Ailes’s office and secretly recorded him saying the kinds of things he’d been saying to her all along. “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better. Sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way, he said in one conversation. “I’m sure you can do sweet nothings when you want to,” he said another time.

 After more than a year of taping, she had captured numerous incidents of sexual harassment. Carlson’s husband, sports agent Casey Close, put her in touch with his lawyer Martin Hyman, who introduced her to employment attorney Nancy Erika Smith. Smith had won a sexual-harassment settlement in 2008 for a woman who sued former New Jersey acting governor Donald DiFranceso. “I hate bullies,” Smith told me. “I became a lawyer to fight bullies.” But this was riskier than any case she’d tried. Carlson’s Fox contract had a clause that mandated that employment disputes be resolved in private arbitration—which meant Carlson’s case could be thrown out and Smith herself could be sued for millions for filing.

 Carlson’s team decided to circumvent the clause by suing Ailes personally rather than Fox News. They hoped that with the element of surprise, they would be able to prevent Fox from launching a preemptive suit that forced them into arbitration. The plan was to file in September 2016 in New Jersey Superior Court (Ailes owns a home in Cresskill, New Jersey). But their timetable was pushed up when, on the afternoon of June 23, Carlson was called into a meeting with Fox general counsel Dianne Brandi and senior executive VP Bill Shine, and fired the day her contract expired.* Smith, bedridden following surgery for a severed hamstring, raced to get the suit ready. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Smith instructed an IT technician to install software on her firm’s network and Carlson’s electronic devices to prevent the use of spyware by Fox. “We didn’t want to be hacked,” Smith said. They filed their lawsuit on July 6.

 Carlson and Smith were well aware that suing Ailes for sexual harassment would be big news in a post-Cosby media culture that had become more sensitive to women claiming harassment; still, they were anxious about going up against such a powerful adversary. What they couldn’t have known was that Ailes’s position at Fox was already much more precarious than ever before.

 When Carlson filed her suit, 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, were in Sun Valley, Idaho, attending the annual Allen & Company media conference. James and Lachlan, who were not fans of Ailes’s, had been taking on bigger and bigger roles in the company in recent years (technically, and much to his irritation, Ailes has reported to them since June 2015), and they were quick to recognize the suit as both a big problem — and an opportunity. Within hours, the Murdoch heirs persuaded their 85-year-old father, who historically has been loath to undercut Ailes publicly, to release a statement saying, “We take these matters seriously.” They also persuaded Rupert to hire the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to conduct an internal investigation into the matter. Making things look worse for Ailes, three days after Carlson’s suit was filed, New York published the accounts of six other women who claimed to have been harassed by Ailes over the course of three decades.

 A few hours after the New York report, Ailes held an emergency meeting with longtime friend Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Marc Mukasey at his home in Garrison, New York, according to a high-level Fox source. Ailes vehemently denied the allegations. The next morning, Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, turned his second-floor office at Fox News into a war room. “It’s all bullshit! We have to get in front of this,” he said to executives. “This is not about money. This is about his legacy,” said Elizabeth, according to a Fox source. As part of his counteroffensive, Ailes rallied Fox News employees to defend him in the press. Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt called Ailes a “family man”; Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto wrote, reportedly of his own volition, an op-ed labeling Ailes’s accusers “sick.” Ailes’s legal team attempted to intimidate a former Fox correspondent named Rudi Bakhtiar who spoke to New York about her harassment.

 Ailes told executives that he was being persecuted by the liberal media and by the Murdoch sons. According to a high-level source inside the company, Ailes complained to 21st Century Fox general counsel Gerson Zweifach that James, whose wife had worked for the Clinton Foundation, was trying to get rid of him in order to help elect Hillary Clinton. At one point, Ailes threatened to fly to France, where Rupert was vacationing with his wife, Jerry Hall, in an effort to save his job. Perhaps Murdoch told him not to bother, because the trip never happened.

 According to a person close to the Murdochs, Rupert’s first instinct was to protect Ailes, who had worked for him for two decades. The elder Murdoch can be extremely loyal to executives who run his companies, even when they cross the line. (The most famous example of this is Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, whom he kept in the fold after the U.K. phone-hacking scandal.) Also, Ailes has made the Murdochs a lot of money — Fox News generates more than $1 billion annually, which accounts for 20 percent of 21st Century Fox’s profits — and Rupert worried that perhaps only Ailes could run the network so successfully. “Rupert is in the clouds; he didn’t appreciate how toxic an environment it was that Ailes created,” a person close to the Murdochs said. “If the money hadn’t been so good, then maybe they would have asked questions.”

 Beyond the James and Lachlan factor, the relationship between Murdoch and Ailes was becoming strained: Murdoch didn’t like that Ailes was putting Fox so squarely behind the candidacy of Donald Trump. And he had begun to worry less about whether Fox could endure without its creator. (In recent years, Ailes had taken extended health leaves from Fox and the ratings held.) Now Ailes had made himself a true liability: More than two dozen Fox News women told the Paul, Weiss lawyers about their harassment in graphic terms. The most significant of the accusers was Megyn Kelly, who is in contract negotiations with Fox and is considered by the Murdochs to be the future of the network. So important to Fox is Kelly that Lachlan personally approved her reported $6 million book advance from Murdoch-controlled publisher HarperCollins, according to two sources.

 As the inevitability of an ouster became clear, chaos engulfed Ailes’s team. After news broke on the afternoon of July 19 that Kelly had come forward, Ailes’s lawyer Susan Estrich tried to send Ailes’s denial to Drudge but mistakenly emailed a draft of Ailes’s proposed severance deal, which Drudge, briefly, published instead. Also that day, Ailes’s allies claimed to conservative news site Breitbart that 50 of Fox’s biggest personalities were prepared to quit if Ailes was removed, though in reality there was no such pact. That evening, Murdoch used one of his own press organs to fire back, with the New York Post tweeting the cover of the next day’s paper featuring Ailes’s picture and news that “the end is near for Roger Ailes.”

 Indeed, that evening Ailes was banned from Fox News headquarters, his company email and phone shut off. On the afternoon of July 21, a few hours before Trump was to accept the Republican nomination in Cleveland, Murdoch summoned Ailes to his New York penthouse to work out a severance deal. James had wanted Ailes to be fired for cause, according to a person close to the Murdochs, but after reviewing his contract, Rupert decided to pay him $40 million and retain him as an “adviser.” Ailes, in turn, agreed to a multiyear noncompete clause that prevents him from going to a rival network (but, notably, not to a political campaign). Murdoch assured Ailes that, as acting CEO of Fox News, he would protect the channel’s conservative voice. “I’m here, and I’m in charge,” Murdoch told Fox staffers later that afternoon with Lachlan at his side (James had gone to Europe on a business trip). That night, Rupert and Lachlan discussed the extraordinary turn of events over drinks at Eleven Madison Park.

 The Murdochs must have hoped that by acting swiftly to remove Ailes, they had averted a bigger crisis. But over the coming days, harassment allegations from more women would make it clear that the problem was not limited to Ailes but included those who enabled him — both the loyal deputies who surrounded him at Fox News and those at 21st Century Fox who turned a blind eye. “Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values,” claimed the lawsuit of Fox anchor Andrea Tantaros, who says she was demoted and smeared in the press after she rebuffed sexual advances from Ailes, “but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion–like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny.”

 Gretchen Carlson.

 Murdoch knew Ailes was a risky hire when he brought him in to start Fox News in 1996. Ailes had just been forced out as president of CNBC under circumstances that would foreshadow his problems at Fox.

 While his volcanic temper, paranoia, and ruthlessness were part of what made Ailes among the best television producers and political operatives of his generation, those same attributes prevented him from functioning in a corporate environment. He hadn’t lasted in a job for more than a few years. “I have been through about 12 train wrecks in my career. Somehow, I always walk away,” he told an NBC executive.

 By all accounts, Ailes had been a management disaster from the moment he arrived at NBC in 1993. But by 1995, things had reached a breaking point. In October of that year, NBC hired the law firm Proskauer Rose to conduct an internal investigation after then–NBC executive David Zaslav told human resources that Ailes had called him a “little fucking Jew prick” in front of a witness.

 Zaslav told Proskauer investigators he feared for his safety. “I view Ailes as a very, very dangerous man. I take his threats to do physical harm to me very, very seriously … I feel endangered both at work and at home,” he said, according to NBC documents, which I first published in my 2014 biography of Ailes. CNBC executive Andy Friendly also filed complaints. “I along with several of my most talented colleagues have and continue to feel emotional and even physical fear dealing with this man every day,” he wrote. The Proskauer report chronicled Ailes’s “history of abusive, offensive, and intimidating statements/threats and personal attacks.” Ailes left NBC less than three months later.

 What NBC considered fireable offenses, Murdoch saw as competitive advantages. He hired Ailes to help achieve a goal that had eluded Murdoch for a decade: busting CNN’s cable news monopoly. Back in the mid-’90s, no one thought it could be done. “I’m looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug,” CNN founder Ted Turner boasted at an industry conference. But Ailes recognized how key wedge issues — race, religion, class — could turn conservative voters into loyal viewers. By January 2002, Fox News had surpassed CNN as the highest-rated cable news channel. But Ailes’s success went beyond ratings: The rise of Fox News provided Murdoch with the political influence in the United States that he already wielded in Australia and the United Kingdom. And by merging news, politics, and entertainment in such an overt way, Ailes was able to personally shape the national conversation and political fortunes as no one ever had before. It is not a stretch to argue that Ailes is largely responsible for, among other things, the selling of the Iraq War, the Swift-boating of John Kerry, the rise of the tea party, the sticking power of a host of Clinton scandals, and the purported illegitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency.

 Ailes became untouchable. At News Corp., he behaved just as he had at NBC, but Murdoch tolerated Ailes’s abusiveness because he was pleased with the results.

 Ailes used Fox’s payroll as a patronage tool, doling out jobs to Republican politicians, friends, and political operatives. He made his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., a regular guest on Fox shows, despite producers’ misgivings about Johnson’s on-air performance. (They nicknamed Johnson “The Must-Do.”) Manny Alvarez, whose daughter went to school with Ailes’s son, became a medical commentator.

 Ailes also positioned his former secretaries in key departments where he could make use of their loyalty to him. One, Nikole King, went to the finance department, where she handled Ailes’s personal expenses, a Fox executive said. Another, Brigette Boyle, went to human resources, where she was “tasked with hiring the ‘right’ people,” a former executive recalled.

 But most striking is the extent to which Ailes ruled Fox News like a surveillance state. According to executives, he instructed Fox’s head of engineering, Warren Vandeveer, to install a CCTV system that allowed Ailes to monitor Fox offices, studios, greenrooms, the back entrance, and his homes. When Ailes spotted James Murdoch on the monitor smoking a cigarette outside the office, he remarked to his deputy Bill Shine, “Tell me that mouth hasn’t sucked a cock,” according to an executive who was in the room; Shine laughed. (A Fox spokesperson said Shine did not recall this.) Fox’s IT department also monitored employee email, according to sources. When I asked Fox’s director of IT, Deborah Sadusingh, about email searches, she said, “I can’t remember all the searches I’ve done.”

 When Ailes uncovered something he didn’t like, he had various means of retaliation and increased surveillance. Fox’s notorious PR department, which for years was directed by Brian Lewis and is now overseen by Irena Briganti, was known for leaking negative stories about errant employees to journalists. Fox contributor Jim Pinkerton wrote an anonymous blog called the Cable Game that attacked Ailes-selected targets, two Fox executives confirmed. Fox contributor Bo Dietl did private-investigation work for Ailes, including following former Fox producer Andrea Mackris after she sued Bill O’Reilly for sexual harassment, a Fox source said. Ailes turned these same tactics on his enemies outside the company, including journalists. CNN’s Brian Stelter recently reported on Fox’s 400-page opposition-research file on me.

 Fox News also obtained the phone records of journalists, by legally questionable means. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, Brandi, Fox’s general counsel, hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cell-phone records of Joe Strupp, a reporter for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters. (Through a spokesperson, Brandi denied this.) In the fall of that year, Strupp had written several articles quoting anonymous Fox sources, and the network wanted to determine who was talking to him. “This was the culture. Getting phone records doesn’t make anybody blink,” one Fox executive told me.

 What makes this practice all the more brazen is that the Guardian was already publishing articles about phone-hacking at Murdoch’s British newspaper division. About that scandal, Murdoch said, “I do not accept ultimate responsibility. I hold responsible the people that I trusted to run it and the people they trusted.” In this case, of course, the person he trusted, inexplicably, was Ailes, and Murdoch does not seem to have wanted to know how Ailes chose to spend company funds. Every year, Murdoch approved Ailes’s budgets without question. “When you have an organization making that much money, we didn’t go line by line through people’s budgets,” a former News Corp. executive said.

 Megyn Kelly.

 Ailes was born in May 1940 in Warren, Ohio, then a booming industrial town. His father, a factory foreman, abused his wife and two sons. “He did like to beat the shit out of you with that belt … It was a pretty routine fixture of childhood,” Ailes’s brother Robert told me when I was reporting my book. His parents divorced in 1960. In court papers, Ailes’s mother alleged that her husband “threatened her life and to do her physical harm.”

 Perhaps as an escape, Ailes lost himself in television. He suffered from hemophilia and was often homebound from school, so he spent hours on the living-room couch watching variety shows and Westerns. “He analyzed it, and he figured it out,” his brother told me of Ailes’s fascination with TV.

 After graduating from Ohio University in 1962, Ailes landed a job as a gofer on The Mike Douglas Show, a daytime variety program that at the time was broadcast from Cleveland. Within four years, he had muscled aside the show’s creator and more seasoned colleagues to become the executive producer. Ailes’s mentor at The Mike Douglas Show, Chet Collier, who would later serve as his deputy at Fox, drilled into him the notion that television is a visual medium. “I’m not hiring talent for their brainpower,” Collier would say.

 Though Ailes had married his college girlfriend, he used his growing power to take advantage of the parade of beautiful women coming through his office hoping to be cast on the show. Over the past two months, I interviewed 18 women who shared accounts of Ailes’s offering them job opportunities if they would agree to perform sexual favors for him and for his friends. In some cases, he threatened to release tapes of the encounters to prevent the women from reporting him. “The feeling I got in the interview was repulsion, power-hungriness, contempt, violence, and the need to subjugate and humiliate,” says a woman who auditioned for Ailes in 1968 when she was a college student.

 In August 1968, Ailes left The Mike Douglas Show to join Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign as a media strategist. Ailes’s success in reinventing the candidate for television helped propel Nixon to the White House and made Ailes a media star (he was the anti-hero of Joe McGinniss’s landmark book The Selling of the President). But even back then, Ailes’s recklessness put his thriving career at risk. A former model told me that her parents called the police on Ailes after she told them he assaulted her in a Cincinnati hotel room in 1969. “I remember Ailes sweet-talking my parents out of pressing charges,” she says.

 One prominent Republican told me that it was Ailes’s well-known reputation for awful behavior toward women that prevented him from being invited to work in the Nixon White House (or, later, in the administration of Bush 41). So after the ’68 election, he moved to New York, where he continued to use his power to demand sex from women seeking career opportunities. During this time Ailes divorced, remarried, and divorced again. A former television producer described an interview with Ailes in 1975, in which he said: “If you want to make it in New York City in the TV business, you’re going to have to fuck me, and you’re going to do that with anyone I tell you to.” While running media strategy on Rudy Giuliani’s 1989 mayoral campaign, Ailes propositioned an employee of his political-consulting firm: He name-dropped his friend Barry Diller and said that if she’d have sex with him he’d ask Diller to get her a part on Beverly Hills 90210. (Diller said he never received such a request.)

 In 1998, two years after launching Fox, Ailes got married for the third time, to a woman named Elizabeth Tilson, a 37-year-old producer who had worked for him at CNBC. Two years later, when Ailes was 59, the couple had a son. But neither a new marriage nor parenthood changed his predatory behavior toward the women who worked for him.

 According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. “He asked, ‘Am I in a relationship? What are my familial ties?’ It was all to see how stable or unstable I was,” said a former employee. Megyn Kelly told lawyers at Paul, Weiss that Ailes made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2006 when she was going through a divorce. A lawyer for former anchor Laurie Dhue told me that Ailes harassed her around 2006; at the time, she was struggling with alcoholism.

 Ailes’s longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza — who became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive — seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts. According to Carlson’s attorney, in 2002, Laterza remarked to a college intern she saw on the elevator about how pretty she was and invited her to meet Ailes. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, “You look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster.” She cut short her internship. (Laterza did not respond to a request for comment.)

 I spoke with another Fox News administrative assistant who said Laterza invited her to meet Ailes in 2004. The woman, then 25, told Ailes that her ambition was to do commercials. Ailes offered to pay for voice lessons (she declined) and helped her land an agent at William Morris. A few months later, Ailes summoned her to his office for an update. She told him how excited she was about the opportunities, and Ailes invited her for a drink. She suggested happy hour, but he demurred. “For a man in my position, it would have to be alone at a hotel,” she recalls him saying. “Do you know how to play the game?” She tried to get out of the situation as tactfully as possible. “I don’t feel comfortable doing this,” she said. “I respect your family; what about your son?” She remembers Ailes’s reply: “I’m a multifaceted man. That’s one side of me.” As she left the office, she says, Ailes tried to kiss her. “I was holding a binder full of voice-over auditions that I put between us. I was terrified.” She says she never heard from the William Morris agent again.

 The fact that these incidents of harassment were so common may have contributed to why no one at Fox came forward or filed a lawsuit until now. Ailes’s attitudes about women permeated the very air of the network, from the exclusive hiring of attractive women to the strictly enforced skirts-and-heels dress code to the “leg cam” that lingers on female panelists’ crossed legs on air. It was hard to complain about something that was so normalized. Other senior executives harassed women, too. “Anyone who claimed there was a hostile work environment was seen as a complainer,” says a former Fox employee who says Ailes harassed her. “Or that they can’t take a joke.”

 Lachlan, Rupert, and James Murdoch in 2014. Photo: Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP Photo

 It is unfathomable to think, given Ailes’s reputation, given the number of women he propositioned and harassed and assaulted over decades, that senior management at Fox News was unaware of what was happening. What is more likely is that their very jobs included enabling, abetting, protecting, and covering up for their boss. “No one said no to Roger,” a Fox executive said.

 The story of Laurie Luhn, which I reported in July, is an example of how Ailes used Fox’s public-relations, legal, and finance departments to facilitate his behavior. Ailes met Luhn on the 1988 George H.W. Bush campaign, and soon thereafter he put her on a $500 monthly retainer with his political-consulting firm to be his “spy” in Washington, though really her job was to meet him in hotel rooms. (During their first encounter, Luhn says, Ailes videotaped her in a garter belt and told her: “I am going to put [the tape] in a safe-deposit box just so we understand each other.”) Ailes recruited Luhn to Fox in 1996, before the network even launched. Collier, then his deputy, offered her a job in guest relations in the Washington bureau.

 Laterza, Shine, and Shine’s deputy Suzanne Scott would take turns summoning Luhn for “meetings” in New York. (A Fox spokesperson said executives were not aware Ailes was sexually involved with Luhn.) Ailes and Luhn would meet in the afternoons, Luhn said, at hotels near Times Square, and Ailes paid her cash for sexual favors. She was also on the payroll at Fox — at her peak, she earned $250,000 a year as an event planner for the channel; multiple sources confirmed that she was a “Friend of Roger,” with special protection within the company. But the arrangement required her to do many things that now cause her anguish, including luring young female Fox employees into one-on-one meetings with Ailes that Luhn knew would likely result in harassment. “You’re going to find me ‘Roger’s Angels,’ ” he reportedly told her. One of Luhn’s employees received a six-figure settlement after filing a harassment claim against Ailes.

 By the fall of 2006, Luhn says, Ailes was worried that she might go public with her story or cause a scene of some kind. That’s when the Fox machine really kicked into gear. According to Luhn, Fox PR tried to spread a rumor to the New York Daily News that Luhn had had an affair with Lee Atwater (which she denies), a story designed to make Luhn seem promiscuous so that her credibility would be damaged. When Luhn had an emotional breakdown en route to a vacation in Mexico, it was Shine’s job to arrange to bring her home. Scott picked her up at the airport and drove her to the Warwick Hotel on Sixth Avenue, where Luhn recalls that Scott checked her in under Scott’s name. (Scott denies this.)

 Luhn later moved into a Fox corporate apartment in Chelsea, during which time, she says, Laterza and Shine monitored her email. (Shine denies this.) Luhn’s father says that Shine called him several times to check up on Luhn after she moved to California while still on the Fox payroll. Eventually, Shine even recommended a psychiatrist, who medicated and hospitalized her. At one point, Luhn attempted suicide. Through a spokesperson, Shine says he “was only trying to help.”

 In late 2010 or early 2011, Luhn wrote a letter to Brandi, the Fox lawyer, saying she had been sexually harassed by Ailes for 20 years. According to a source, Brandi asked Ailes about the allegations, which he denied. Brandi then worked out a settlement at Ailes’s request. On June 15, 2011, Luhn signed a $3.15 million settlement agreement with extensive nondisclosure provisions. The payment was approved by Fox News CFO Mark Kranz. The check, which I viewed, was signed by David E. Miller, a treasurer for Fox Television Stations, Inc., a division run by current Fox co-president Jack Abernethy. “I have no idea how my name ended up on the check,” says Miller, citing standard company practice of signing checks and not asking questions. The settlement documents, which Luhn also showed me, were signed by Ailes, Brandi, and Shine.

 After Luhn left Fox, Ailes took additional measures to conceal his harassment of employees. In 2011, he installed a floor-to-ceiling wooden door outside his executive suite. Only his assistants could see who entered his office. According to a former Fox producer, Laterza entered fake names into Ailes’s datebook when women went into his office: “If you got ahold of his ledger, you would not know who visited him.”

 Still, the whispers about Ailes and women were growing louder. Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, told me she grew suspicious when Fox anchors came to see her before private meetings with Ailes to have their makeup done. “They would say, ‘I’m going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!’ ” she recalled. “One of them came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone.”

 In 2012, after I had been reporting my Ailes biography for a year, Megyn Kelly became so concerned about the rumors that she went to Ailes’s then–PR chief, Brian Lewis, and attempted an intervention, according to a person close to Kelly. She told Lewis that Ailes was being reckless and that I might include his behavior in my book. (I did report the stories of two women who claimed Ailes had harassed them earlier in his career, and though I heard rumors of Ailes and Fox News women, I could not confirm them at the time.) Lewis, according to the source, asked Laterza to tell Ailes to stop because he thought Ailes might listen to his longtime assistant. Instead, according to the source, Laterza told Ailes that his PR chief was being disloyal. Less than a year later, Ailes fired Lewis.

 Megyn Kelly was not a household name when she started at Fox News in 2004. A former corporate lawyer, she landed at Fox when former Special Report anchor Brit Hume recommended her to Ailes. She still wasn’t well known in 2006, when she got divorced and Ailes tried to take advantage of her perceived vulnerability. She may not have been any more powerful, at the time, than the other women he preyed on, but she was one of the lucky ones: She managed to rebuff his sexual overtures in a way that didn’t alienate her boss. “She was able to navigate the relationship to a professional place,” a person close to Kelly told me. In fact, Kelly’s career flourished after this. In 2010, Ailes gave her a two-hour midday show, on which she enthusiastically fanned his right-wing agenda — for instance, hyping stories about the New Black Panthers that many thought were racist. In October 2013, Ailes promoted Kelly to Sean Hannity’s 9 p.m. prime-time slot, where she memorably declared that Jesus and Santa are “white.” When asked by a fan on Twitter to name her biggest influence, she responded, “Roger Ailes.”

 By 2015, although her show was still reliably right-wing, Kelly’s brand was evolving. After several high-profile clashes with Republican men, including Dick Cheney, she was developing something of a reputation as a feminist. As she entered the final two years of her contract, she started to think about a future outside of Fox, meeting with CNN chief Jeff Zucker in 2013.

 Then came Donald Trump. Kelly’s feud with the GOP nominee was one of the dominant story lines of the presidential election; it also exploded the fragile balance of relationships at the top of Fox News.

 According to Fox sources, Murdoch blamed Ailes for laying the groundwork for Trump’s candidacy. Ailes had given Trump, his longtime friend, a weekly call-in segment on Fox & Friends to sound off on political issues. (Trump used Fox News to mainstream the birther conspiracy theory.) Ailes also had lunch with Trump days before he launched his presidential campaign and continued to feed him political advice throughout the primaries, according to sources close to Trump and Ailes. (And in the days after Carlson filed her lawsuit, Trump advised Ailes on navigating the crisis, even recommending a lawyer.)

 Murdoch was not a fan of Trump’s and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: “Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” Trump told me in March.) A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. “This has gone on long enough,” Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox’s debate moderators — Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace — to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. “Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee,” Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn’t fight Murdoch on the debate directive.

 On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions. But it was Kelly’s question regarding Trump’s history of crude comments about women that created a media sensation. He seemed personally wounded by her suggestion that this spoke to a temperament that might not be suited for the presidency. “I’ve been very nice to you, though I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me,” he said pointedly.

 After the debate, Trump called Ailes and screamed about Kelly. “How could you do this?” he said, according to a person briefed on the call. Ailes was caught between his friend Trump, his boss Murdoch, and his star Kelly. “Roger lost control of Megyn and Trump,” a Fox anchor said.

 The parties only became more entrenched when Trump launched a series of attacks against Kelly, including suggesting that her menstrual cycle had influenced her debate question. Problematically for Ailes, Fox’s audience took Trump’s side in the fight; Kelly received death threats from viewers, according to a person close to her. Kelly had even begun to speculate, according to one Fox source, that Trump might have been responsible for her getting violently ill before the debate last summer. Could he have paid someone to slip something into her coffee that morning in Cleveland? she wondered to colleagues.

 While Ailes released a statement defending Kelly, he privately blamed her for creating the crisis. “It was an unfair question,” he told a Fox anchor. Kelly felt betrayed, both by Ailes and by colleagues like O’Reilly and Baier when they didn’t defend her, sources who spoke with her said. “She felt she put herself out there,” a colleague said.

 Frustrated at Fox, Kelly hired a powerhouse agent at CAA and began auditioning in earnest, and in public, for a job at another network. In interviews, she said her ambition was to become the next Barbara Walters and to host prime-time specials. She wanted to prove to the industry she could land a “big get” — and the biggest get of all was Trump. So Kelly went to Trump Tower to lobby the candidate for an interview. It worked — even Trump couldn’t resist the spectacle of a rematch — but in the end the show failed: The ratings were terrible and reviewers panned her generally sycophantic questions. Worse for Kelly, it eroded her burgeoning status as a tough journalist who stood up to Trump. Afterward, her relationship with Ailes further deteriorated. According to Fox sources, they barely spoke in recent months.

 Kelly and Gretchen Carlson were not friends or allies, but Carlson’s lawsuit presented an opportunity. Kelly could bust up the boys’ club at Fox, put herself on the right side of a snowballing media story, and rid herself of a boss who was no longer supportive of her — all while maximizing her leverage in a contract negotiation. She also had allies in the Murdoch sons. According to a source, Kelly told James Murdoch that Ailes had made harassing comments and inappropriately hugged her in his office. James and Lachlan both encouraged her to speak to the Paul, Weiss lawyers about it. Kelly was only the third or fourth woman to speak to the lawyers, according to a source briefed on the inquiry, but she was by far the most important. After she spoke with investigators, and made calls to current and former Fox colleagues to encourage them to speak to Paul, Weiss as well, many more women came forward.

 Ailes was furious with Kelly for not defending him publicly. According to a Fox source, Ailes’s wife Elizabeth wanted Fox PR to release racy photos of Kelly published years ago in GQ as a way of discrediting her. The PR department, in this instance, refused. (Elizabeth is said to be taking all of the revelations especially hard, according to four sources close to the family. Giuliani, who officiated their wedding, told Murdoch she would likely divorce Ailes, according to two sources: “This marriage won’t last,” he said.)

 Two days after New York reported that Kelly had told her story to Paul, Weiss attorneys, Ailes was gone. And Kelly had made herself more important to the network than ever.

 Ailes’s ouster has created a leadership vacuum at Fox News. Several staffers have described feeling like being part of a totalitarian regime whose dictator has just been toppled. “No one knows what to do. No one knows who to report to. It’s just mayhem,” said a Fox host. As details of the Paul, Weiss investigation have filtered through the offices, staffers are expressing a mixture of shock and disgust. The scope of Ailes’s alleged abuse far exceeds what employees could have imagined. “People are so devastated,” one senior executive said. Those I spoke with have also been unnerved by Shine and Brandi’s roles in covering up Ailes’s behavior.

 Despite revelations of how Ailes’s management team enabled his harassment, Murdoch has so far rejected calls — including from James, according to sources — to conduct a wholesale housecleaning. On August 12, Murdoch promoted Shine and another Ailes loyalist, Jack Abernethy, to become co-presidents of Fox News. He named Scott executive vice-president and kept Brandi and Briganti in their jobs. Fox News’s chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, is the only senior executive to have been pushed out (officially he retired), along with Laterza and a handful of assistants, contributors, and consultants. “Of course, they are trying to isolate this to just a few bad actors,” a 21st Century Fox executive told me.

 Many people I spoke with believe that the current management arrangement is just a stopgap until the election. “As of November 9, there will be a bloodbath at Fox,” predicts one host. “After the election, the prime-time lineup could be eviscerated. O’Reilly’s been talking about retirement. Megyn could go to another network. And Hannity will go to Trump TV.”

 The prospect of Trump TV is a source of real anxiety for some inside Fox. The candidate took the wedge issues that Ailes used to build a loyal audience at Fox News — especially race and class — and used them to stoke barely containable outrage among a downtrodden faction of conservatives. Where that outrage is channeled after the election — assuming, as polls now suggest, Trump doesn’t make it to the White House — is a big question for the Republican Party and for Fox News. Trump had a complicated relationship with Fox even when his good friend Ailes was in charge; without Ailes, it’s plausible that he will try to monetize the movement he has galvanized in competition with the network rather than in concert with it. Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart, the digital-media upstart that has by some measures already surpassed Fox News as the locus of conservative energy, to run his campaign suggests a new right-wing news network of some kind is a real possibility. One prominent media executive told me that if Trump loses, Fox will need to try to damage him in the eyes of its viewers by blaming him for the defeat.

 Meanwhile, the Murdochs are looking for a permanent CEO to navigate these post-Ailes, Trump-roiled waters. According to sources, James’s preferred candidates include CBS president David Rhodes (though he is under contract with CBS through 2019); Jesse Angelo, the New York Post publisher and James’s Harvard roommate; and perhaps a television executive from London. Sources say Lachlan, who politically is more conservative than James, wants to bring in an outsider. Rupert was seen giving Rebekah Brooks a tour of the Fox offices several months ago, creating speculation that she could be brought in to run Fox. Another contender is Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy.

 As for the women who collectively brought an end to the era of Roger Ailes, their fortunes are mixed. Megyn Kelly is in a strong position in her contract talks, and sources say Gretchen Carlson will soon announce an eight-figure settlement. But because New York has a three-year statute of limitations on sexual harassment, so far just two women in addition to Carlson are said to be receiving settlements from 21st Century Fox. The many others who left or were forced out of the company before the investigation came away with far less — in some cases nothing at all.

 It’s hard to say that justice has been served. But the story isn’t over: Last week, the shareholder law firm Scott & Scott announced it was investigating 21st Century Fox to “determine whether Fox’s Officers and Directors have breached their fiduciary duties.” Meanwhile, Ailes is walking away from his biggest career train wreck yet, seeking relevance and renewed power through the one person in the country who doesn’t see him as political kryptonite, the candidate he created: Donald J. Trump. Ailes may be trying to sell us another president, but now we know the truth about the salesman.

 *This sentence has been updated to reflect Shine’s presence at the meeting, a detail that was confirmed after publication.

 *This article appears in the September 5, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.

 *An earlier version of the article inaccurately stated Manny Alvarez is Elizabeth Ailes’s doctor. ||||| It has been exactly two months since Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, sued her old boss, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment. The suit inaugurated a frenetic series of events, not only within Fox News’s subterranean newsroom—where staffers feared for their jobs and, in one case, even the network’s future—but also throughout the media, as other women came forward to share their own stories of harassment. It all resulted in Ailes’s dramatic, and nearly mind-boggling, ouster from the news network that he co-founded 20 years ago. (Ailes has repeatedly, and fervently, denied all allegations of sexual harassment.)

 On Friday, Ailes biographer and New York writer Gabriel Sherman, who has broken key elements of the story, published a lengthy cover article detailing Ailes’s downfall. As I have reported, Ailes’s own apparent paranoia increased around the time that Sherman began reporting his unauthorized biography, which was published in early 2014. According to a person close to Ailes, he hung a wooden door, now dismantled, that obscured any view into his office suite; according to numerous people, he also recorded anyone who entered. Ailes kept guns in the office (a Glock and Smith & Wesson were discovered by 21st Century Fox after his ouster). Carlson and others, including former Fox News booker Laurie Luhn, also detailed Ailes’s alleged harassment, much of it outlined by Sherman in his coverage.

 In the early days of the Ailes saga, many applauded how 21st Century Fox was handling the crisis. Rather than defending Ailes, C.E.O. James Murdoch and Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch heralded a new era at the media empire by investigating him. Their swift decision to launch an internal investigation into the allegations, handled by the top-flight law firm Paul, Weiss, signaled that the younger Murdochs were prepared to adopt a different tack than their laissez–faire father, Rupert Murdoch, who is famously loyal to his deputies and whose relationship with Ailes went back decades. In doing so, they seemed determined to leave the seamiest aspects of Fox News’s culture behind for good.

 But there was always a tension between cleaning things up and preserving Fox News, which makes $1 billion in annual profit. The Murdochs appear intent on putting the Ailes saga behind them as they move into the last stretches of an election and an attempt to corral crucial anchors, such as Megyn Kelly, to re-sign with the network. Now the company has agreed, on behalf of Ailes, to settle Carlson’s suit for a stunning $20 million, according to three people familiar with the settlement. To reinforce their seriousness about creating a new culture in a post-Ailes world, the company offered Carlson a public apology as part of the settlement. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” the statement noted. (The company, according to two people familiar with the discussions, has also reached settlement agreements with two other women.)

 Though Carlson’s case is against Ailes personally, Fox is essentially his insurer for any settlement, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, and discussions between Ailes’s legal team and 21st Century Fox’s legal team became very tense regarding how much Ailes might pay in a settlement. (At press time, it was unclear how much Ailes was personally on the hook for.) As part of the language at the end of the settlement, numerous people with knowledge of the deal told me, Carlson has agreed not to bring any further legal action against other executives at Fox News, or against the company itself.

 The settlement punctuates an important chapter in the Ailes scandal. While the Paul, Weiss investigation interviewed more than 20 women, according to two sources familiar with the process, it never officially expanded to examine the broader culture of Fox News. The firm, according to numerous people familiar with the process, was apparently never ordered to scour the company’s hard drives for all evidence of sexual harassment or bawdy culture. In some ways, according to one person familiar with the process, the Paul, Weiss investigation simply got a revenue machine back on track. ||||| Acting on behalf of deposed Fox News honcho Roger Ailes and wife Elizabeth, attorney Charles Harder — Hulk Hogan’s libel lawyer — has requested that New York magazine and writer Gabriel Sherman preserve all documents pertaining to Ailes, a not-so-subtle threat of possible legal action in response to the magazine’s damning article about sexual harassment at the network.

 Magazine spokeswoman Lauren Starke confirmed today that New York and Sherman — the magazine’s national affairs editor — have been contacted by Harder, as first reported by The Financial Times. “New York Media and Gabriel Sherman were contacted by Charles Harder on behalf of Roger and Elizabeth Ailes, asking that we preserve documents related to the Ailes, for a possible defamation claim.” a spokeswoman for the magazine said Monday.

 REX/Shutterstock

 Harder’s letter “was not informative” as to specific objections to the magazine’s cover story “The Revenge of Roger’s Angels.”

 Harder might have a hard time choosing just one objection. As Deadline recently reported about the article, Sherman’s details “the 15 days it took to end the 20-year reign” of Ailes at Fox News after former FNC host Gretchen Carlson filed her sex harassment lawsuit. Among the charges: Carlson used her smartphone to record conversations to support her claims of ongoing harassment by Ailes.

 Associated Press

 If Harder follows through with legal action — a big assumption based solely on the contact confirmed by the magazine today — it would be the attorney’s third high-profile media case in recent memory: He represented Hogan in the former wrestler’s highly successful suit against Gawker, and was retained by Melania Trump in a defamation suit against The Daily Mail and blog Tarpley.

 Still, the tactic of a legal threat by the Ailes’ attorney is by now chillingly familiar: After sending correspondence of intent to the Daily Mail in response to allegations that Melania Trump was once an escort, the Mail quickly retracted the tale. A similar response from NY Mag is unlikely.

 Deadline’s Dominic Patten contributed to this report |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Gretchen Carlson will take $20 million off Fox News' hands, settling on Roger Ailes' behalf in response to Carlson's sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit, reports Vanity Fair. Included with the settlement is what the magazine calls an "unprecedented" public apology for Carlson, an apparent effort by Fox to show its commitment to cleaning up the unpalatable culture allegedly rampant under Ailes' reign. "21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit," a Fox statement read, per Politico. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect that she & all our colleagues deserve." Vanity Fair notes that while Carlson's lawsuit was technically against Ailes, Fox serves as his insurer, and conversations between the Fox and Ailes camps about how much Ailes will have to pony up himself were said to be "tense" (there's no official word yet on what that figure will be). Sources tell Vanity Fair that two other women were also granted settlements, and that as part of Carlson's settlement, she's agreed not to take any more legal action against Fox or its execs. Carlson issued a statement saying she's "gratified" the company has taken "decisive action" regarding her suit. In related news: Ailes defender Greta Van Susteren abruptly left the network Tuesday, per Politico. No official word on why, though a source tells Politico it was for financial reasons. Meanwhile, Ailes' legal team has been threatening legal action against New York magazine and reporter Gabriel Sherman for what Deadline calls a "damning" article about Fox's sexual harassment issues.