RE:RE:RE:Keeping mum for the Canadian Securities Exchange?@RC, our friend @NOWemployee is providing some previously unknown information.
We do know that Kirk's involvement in NOW Toronto precedes the Media Central purchase. After he was axed from the Toronto Star he turned up as an advisor and nutty American-uncle figure, attached to NOW. Evidently he had a rapport with NOW co-founder Michael Howlett, who subsequently left.
It turns out that once upon a time Kirk had been an ad salesman with an Atlanta alt-weekly, known as "Creative Loafing." By implanting himself at NOW he positioned himself to be at the centre of Media Central's stated orginal purpose, which was assembling a North America-wide chain of 100 alt-weeklies.
My assumption has been that Media Central was the vision of Mr. Brian "Brain Knish" Kalish, the ex-CEO who was deposed last year (and the current genius behind Xigem.)
However, given the way events unfolded, we may need to consider the idea that nutty old Uncle Kirk might have been some sort of behind-the-scenes Khrushchev figure, happy enough to present himself outwardly as a boob in order to cause others to underestimate him, thus gaining an upper hand.
Certainly it could only have been Kirk who found Carolyn Wall in Manhattan and got her to accept a director's role at MC -- which might now cost her entire retirement savings after she and Manos and Dave Daniels are eventually declared responsible for unpaid employee wages and benefits.
But seemingly Kirk personally never wanted to be a director.
He kept his name off the masthead. He seldom tweeted about NOW or Media Central, just yammering about sports and right-wing USA politics. Some wondered if this low profile might have something to do with his immigration status in Canada. Now I'm considering the idea that he may been the Nikita Khrushchev within this lunatic politburo.