From the AP’s Sides agree to drop Paula Deen discrimination suit:

The lawsuit would be dismissed “with prejudice,” which means it can’t be brought again with the same claims.

“While this has been a difficult time for both my family and myself, I am pleased that the judge dismissed the race claims and I am looking forward to getting this behind me, now that the remaining claims have been resolved,” Deen said in a statement Friday.

Jackson also issued a statement that backpedaled on assertions in her lawsuit that Deen held “racist views.”

“I assumed that all of my complaints about the workplace environment were getting to Paula Deen, but I learned during this matter that this was not the case,” Jackson said in the statement, which was confirmed by her attorney. “The Paula Deen I have known for more than eight years is a woman of compassion and kindness and will never tolerate discrimination or racism of any kind toward anyone.”

In other words, the plaintiff Jackson is saying that her complaints about the work environment at Uncle Bubba’s were not getting all the way to Deen. The ending of the lawsuit has given Deen a chance to distance herself from some of the claims and from the workplace environment at Uncle Bubba’s that spawned those claims.

A few thoughts:

1) I’ve seen a few comments online from Paula Deen supporters who are disappointed that the civil lawsuit is not going to trial, where Deen would surely be vindicated.

Those people are wrong.

Deen, her brother, and other parties might actually have won the case, but, given the content of Hiers’ deposition, it would have been a sordid affair — widely covered, with daily doses of testimony about the N-word, racial tension, and pornography being viewed in the workplace at Uncle Bubba’s.

And we likely would have heard more stories about simmering resentments grounded in race and culture, like this one about the feelings of one of Deen’s longtime cooks.

Hard to see any winners in that.

2) It’s hard to know whom to blame — Deen herself?, her original legal team?, her PR strategists? — but this suit should have been settled out of court soon after it was filed. If nothing else, Deen and the rest should have settled it as soon as they read  Hiers’ deposition. And after they read some of the statements in Deen’s deposition, some of which sound really terrible when isolated, they should have been offering Jackson whatever she wanted.

3) It’s worth keeping in mind that Deen’s brand was already under some pressure before this lawsuit burst onto the headlines with the release of Deen’s deposition. The Food Network contract was about to expire without a new one being signed.

Also, and maybe more importantly, we’ve been seeing a shift in how Americans think about food generally and about Southern cuisine specifically.

Wander sometime down to the Forsyth Farmers’ Market on Saturdays here in Savannah, and take a look at the crowds. They’re buying plenty of meat, eggs, even cheese, but they’re shopping for those products direct from growers and farmers who seem to respect the animals they’re raising. Those shoppers — including local chefs and restaurant managers — are also buying in-season vegetables by the armload.

A few years ago, with some minor but meaningful changes in her cooking and branding, Deen could have ridden this wave of interest in fresher and more local ingredients. I’m not saying she necessarily should have, but she could have. If she had made that shift, ever so slightly, she might have miffed a few butter-starved fans, but she also might have been able to shed some of the caricatures that have attached themselves to her.

Imagine if, instead of signing an endorsement deal for a diabetes drug, Deen had launched a mini-crusade to look past the prepackaged products that defined Southern cooking in the second half of the 20th century and to embrace the increasing movement toward heritage farming and truly traditional cooking.

4) This entire case should serve as a warning for any small businessperson who makes it big.

I know restaurant owners all over Savannah who say things at work that would sound horrible in court documents. Plus, it’s common to see managers and their employees out drinking together once the dinner shift is over. Lines blur.

But once restaurant owners — and other small business owners — have achieved even a modicum of success, they need to follow sound policies in terms of human resources management and corporate liability. Harassment and discrimination lawsuits can undo businesses financially and in terms of public relations.

5) The handling of this lawsuit has also provided plenty of fodder for public relations courses.

For years, Deen seemed to be a natural self-marketer — and she brought many other small businesses in Savannah along for the ride.

But how could anyone be so tone-deaf about the content of those depositions? Was there any viable plan for crisis management in those hectic and stressful days after the national media firestorm started?

But in a matter of hours, the plaintiff’s attorney who was the source of that news, subsequently retracted it. Now WTOC’s Don Logana is again reporting that the suit has been settled after mediation. The portion of the suit dealing with racial issues was dismissed a couple of weeks ago largely because Jackson, who is white, could not prove that she was in fact harmed by the behaviors that she alleges and that seem largely confirmed by the depositions.

As I’ve said over and over, this lawsuit should have been settled ages ago.

So here’s my first embed of a public Facebook post — it’s a new feature that Facebook added recently:

I’ll keep an eye out for other confirmation.

Matt Billips, the attorney for the plaintiff Lisa Jackson, said paperwork will be filed later Monday. A court threw out racial aspect of lawsuit on Monday morning.

I haven’t seen any other media outlets report on this news yet, so if there’s additional news this evening, I’ll update this post as necessary.

UPDATE: WTOC now says this on Facebook:

The racial discrimination portions of the suit were thrown out by a judge earlier today, as many of us expected would happen eventually. From Judge dismisses racial claims in Paula Deen lawsuit at SavannahNow:

U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr., in a 20-page order filed today, ruled plaintiff Lisa Jackson did not allege she was the target of unlawful racial discrimination and did not suffer any adverse employment decision.

“Her difficulties do not fall within the zone of interests sought to be protected by Title VII and cannot support a claim of racial discrimination under the statute,” Moore ruled.

The plaintiff Jackson is white, as those who have followed this case should know.

A snippet from my July 4th post A few thoughts on the latest Paula Deen news and Bubba Hiers†deposition:

Despite the general ugliness of this latest document, Iâ€d say itâ€s possible that Deen and Hiers might even win this lawsuit at a trial largely on the grounds that Jackson was not truly harmed by the behavior she had to deal with.

But, really, why would anyone on the Deen legal team or PR team think this lawsuit was worth fighting? As Iâ€ve said in previous posts, it should have been glaringly clear to any dispassionate advisor just how ugly this whole mess would get if Hiers†and Deenâ€s depositions became public.

Even if there was some chance of the defendants winning the case, the ugly revelations about racial language and — especially — about the viewing of pornography in the workplace at Uncle Bubba’s were obviously going to make headlines at some point. Anyone should have been able to recognize that. Removing the racial aspect from the lawsuit does nothing to remove those elements from the depositions, and a prolonged court battle would have, with each day, delayed any chance for Deen to approach the PR problem proactively.

In other words, settling the case was the right thing to do the moment suit was filed, the right thing to do over the many months during which depositions were taken and evidence gathered, and the right thing to do right now.

Paula Deenâ€s Cook Tells of Slights, Steeped in History

Severson obviously spent hours trying to understand the world of Dora Charles, “the queen of Deen kitchens” for 22 years. So Charles’ work with Deen predates by a decade the years of fame. Clearly, Deen and Charles were very close on many levels, but their relationship echoes many traditionally southern ones between white employers and black employees.

Charles is “not expecting any money,” but she does claim that Deen used racially offensive language at times. But the story isn’t really about legal issues. It’s just a story — a sort of sad and touching one.

One snippet:

For a black woman in Savannah with a ninth-grade education, though, it was good steady work. And Ms. Deen, she said, held out the promise that together, they might get rich one day.

Now, Ms. Deen, 66, is fighting empire-crushing accusations of racism, and Mrs. Charles, 59 and nursing a bad shoulder, lives in an aging trailer home on the outskirts of Savannah.

“Itâ€s just time that everybody knows that Paula Deen donâ€t treat me the way they think she treat me,” she said.

The relationship between Mrs. Charles and Ms. Deen is a complex one, laced with history and deep affection, whose roots can be traced back to the antebellum South. Depending on whether Mrs. Charles or Ms. Deen tells the story, it illustrates lives of racial inequity or benevolence.

Even though we could find plenty of 66-year old Southerners who never used the N-word and many of Deenâ€s age who joined civil rights protests as early as the 1960s, Iâ€m inclined to give Deen a pass on this one.

If only the past use of the N-word were the only issue.

When I began reading the transcript of Deenâ€s deposition, I started with the assumption that Lisa T. Jacksonâ€s lawsuit about treatment of employees at Uncle Bubbaâ€s might be groundless — that it might just be a money grab.

But itâ€s clear even from Deenâ€s testimony that some of the basic facts of Jacksonâ€s allegations are true and were even admitted by Deenâ€s brother Bubba Hiers.

And now WSAV here in Savannah has posted a copy of Bubba Hiers’ deposition. In it, Hiers admits to taking cash from his restaurant’s deposits, looking at pornography on two different computers at Uncle Bubba’s, and using the N-word multiple times, in different contexts. It seems clear that other folks in management, including the plaintiff in the lawsuit Lisa Jackson, tried to get Hiers to step away from active management and become more of a figurehead. In one of the odder moments, Hiers notes that the money he took from the restaurant was simply reported as taxable income and that he received a raise when he ceased taking cash from the deposits.

From the deposition, it’s hard to know how often Hiers engaged in these various behaviors that would be any HR manager’s nightmare. Despite the length of the deposition, it’s tough to get a sense of the frequency of anything because of the vagueness of Hiers’ responses.

Despite the general ugliness of this latest document, I’d say it’s possible that Deen and Hiers might even win this lawsuit at a trial largely on the grounds that Jackson was not truly harmed by the behavior she had to deal with.

But, really, why would anyone on the Deen legal team or PR team think this lawsuit was worth fighting? As I’ve said in previous posts, it should have been glaringly clear to any dispassionate advisor just how ugly this whole mess would get if Hiers’ and Deen’s depositions became public.

With Hiers’deposition now available, it’s easier to see where Deen was coming from in her deposition, as she repeatedly tried to normalize and justify her younger brother’s actions.

So now we’re about to get another round of media scrutiny that goes beyond Deen’s use of the N-word. The inevitability of such additional news surely played some role in the collapse of endorsements and other deals.

For a look at this whole mess from a business perspective, I’d highly recommend Businessweek’s For Paula Deen, Management Mess Leads to Career Meltdown. From that piece:

The swiftness with which Deen was abandoned by her corporate partners is a reminder of the sensitivities that continue to surround issues of race and class. Yet her story is only partly a cultural one. A look at the rise and fall of Paula Deen Enterprises demonstrates the particular perils of building a business empire based on the distillation and heavy promotion of one personâ€s life story. Over the years, Deen lent her name, aura, and visage to an unwieldy menagerie of products, services, and people—including her own brother—over which she exerted little control. Once the foundation of her reputation came under scrutiny, the edifice crumbled.

The analysis has an interesting passage about the effectiveness of selling a downhome personality and comfort food after 9/11. The whole piece is well worth a read.

According to the WSJ, Deen has also “parted ways with her longtime agent Barry Weiner.” For those who want to see Deen recover her career, the WSJ piece gives considerable hope:

Chris Shigas, a vice president at public-relations agency French West Vaughan, who helped to repair the image of National Football League player Michael Vick after Mr. Vick served 18 months in prison on dog fighting and conspiracy charges, said he believes Ms. Deen can recover from her crisis. […]

“The American public is very forgiving. If she could really learn empathy, I think she could salvage her career. If she does, in earnest, work to make amends with the American public and have an open dialogue with groups who are working to educate people every day, I think that would be a good thing for America, and she would create a new brand,” Mr. Shigas said.

“It would be Paula Deen 2.0. I don’t know what that would look like or what it would become, but it would be a new generation of her brand,” he added.

The difference of course is that, at the end of the day, Michael Vick did not have to sell his personality.

Why, a mere week from the expiration of the current contract, had Paula Deen and the Food Network not yet signed a new contract?

The lack of a new contract seemed to me an indication that this whole story was a little more complex than it appeared.

The Wall Street Journal addressed the issue of the contract today with Paula Deen’s Other Problem: Stale Ratings. From that piece:

For several weeks before the controversy blew up last week, Ms. Deen’s agent had been negotiating with the Food Network to extend her contract, which ends June 30, the people said. One issue complicating the negotiations: her ratings had slid substantially over the past season.

“Things were not going as planned,” said one person familiar with the negotiations, noting that an unresolved contract extension so late in the game was unusual. […]

The Food Network, majority owned by Scripps Networks Interactive Inc.didn’t cite a reason for its decision to drop her. But people close to the show and the food-television industry say the decision comes as the kind of “dump and stir” instructional food shows in which Ms. Deen and others, like Martha Stewart, specialized have fallen out of fashion. […]

Ratings for Ms. Deen’s show “Paula’s Best Dishes” were down 15% in total viewers—and 22% in the 18-49 demographic that advertisers care most about—for the 2012-13 season, compared with last season, according to Nielsen ratings provided by Horizon Media.

The article also notes the Food Network’s move toward “food-themed reality shows and cooking competitions” — a sharp departure from Deen’s programs.

And this:

As ratings declined, the cost of Ms. Deen’s show became too high for the network to support, according to people familiar with the matter, particularly as the network itself faced prime-time ratings declines of 17% in the target demographic and 15% in households for the 2012-13 season as of June 20, according to a UBS analysis of Nielsen ratings.

As noted in the piece, the ratings decline occurred after Deen announced that she had diabetes and was promoting a diabetes drug. The timing is not necessarily proof of a causal connection but I think there probably was a significant relationship.

Then again, the decline in Deen’s ratings seem broadly similar to the decline in the network’s ratings as a whole.

I have previously speculated that Americans’ changing tastes in food — the growing emphasis on fresher and more local ingredients — might have played a role in the Food Network’s decision. Given what’s noted in the WSJ piece, I was probably wrong about that. However, those changing tastes might have also contributed to the decline in Deen’s ratings over the last year or so.

I feel badly for Paula Deen this week, but my mind is boggled by the series of bungled PR decisions that began over a year ago and just kept intensifying.

But today it seems worthwhile to note a few of the journalistic takes on the evolving controversy.

Here I’m just going to cite three significant pieces and make a few comments about them.

The AP had a major article yesterday: PAULA DEEN FANS VENT THEIR OUTRAGE AT FOOD NETWORK. From that piece:

Angry messages piled up Saturday on the network’s Facebook page, with many Deen fans threating to change the channel for good. “So good-bye Food Network,” one viewer wrote. “I hope you fold like an accordion!!!”

The decision to drop Deen, whose daytime shows have been a Food Network fixture since 2002, came two days after disclosure of a recent court deposition in which Deen was asked under oath if she had ever used the N-word. “Yes, of course,” 66-year-old Deen said, though she added, “It’s been a very long time.”

And this:

The fallout may not end with Food Network. At least two other companies that do business with Deen say they’re keeping a close eye on the controversy. Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment Corporation, which has Deen’s restaurants in some of its casinos, said Friday that it “will continue to monitor the situation.” Publisher Ballantine, which has a new Deen book scheduled to roll out this fall, used similar words.

As I noted in a short post on Friday, I’d guess that the Food Network’s decision-making extended well beyond the confines of the narrow question of Deen’s past use of the N-word.

The general public is largely assuming that the Food Network’s decision was based solely on that one issue, but one would hope that, in the absence of a broader statement from the Food Network, media coverage would try to provide a broader context for the decision.

The New York Times has a typically interesting piece: At Georgia Restaurant, Patrons Jump to Defend a Chef From Her Critics.

The accompanying image online is one of the pre-lunch line at The Lady & Sons — a photo dominated by a number of overweight women. I’d say that this is purely manipulative, but it’s clearly just a random shot on the street.

From that piece:

“I donâ€t understand why some people can use it and others canâ€t,” said Rebecca Beckerwerth, 55, a North Carolina native who lives in Arizona and had made reservations at the restaurant Friday.

Tyrone A. Forman, the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University, said the use of derogatory words can mean different things to different groups.

“People take a term that was a way to denigrate or hold people in bondage for the purpose of continuing their subordination and turn it around as a way to reclaim it,” he said.

But that kind of subtlety is often lost in a discussion of race.

“That nuance is too much for us,” Mr. Forman said. “We have a black president so weâ€re postracial, right? Someone uses the N-word? Thatâ€s racist. But the reality is there is a lot of gray.”

Some who thought Ms. Deenâ€s words were hurtful gave her a pass for her apparent inability to articulate her evolution on race and her awkward apologies, which she offered in a series of three videos on Friday.

As I noted in my first post about this issue on Friday, I am also inclined to give Deen a pass on her language, even though I find it silly that so many keep insisting that every white Southerner of her age has used the N-word.

The Savannah Morning News has also finally published a detailed look at the allegations and statements regarding Deen’s use of the N-word. I say “finally” because the story started making national headlines on Wednesday. Editor Susan Catron has an interesting commentary — Fast news vs. factual news — explaining that reporter Jan Skutch was doing due diligence and reviewing multiple documents rather than cherry-picking a few controversial quotes. I agree broadly with Catron’s points, but disagree that the paper should have taken so much time before publishing anything of substance. I also disagree with the choice to look only at the very narrow question of Deen’s use of the N-word. The national media firestorm might be focusing on that narrow question, but her deposition contains far more problematic elements.

So the SMN piece today is titled “Paula Deen and the N-word”, according to the link on the home page and the URL. But if you go to the article, the title changes: Plaintiff’s deposition in Paula Deen case: never heard a racist remark.

It’s pretty common for articles’ titles to shift as one clicks through a publication’s website, but I note the distinction in this case because the latter title is not strictly true. Plaintiff Lisa Jackson’s complaint — click here to read it — says that she and “her employees were surrounded in the workplace with the most vulgar and obscene racial comments” and details alleged examples. You can read about those in slightly more detail in Jackson’s deposition, (especially, p. 53).

So the title of the piece simply does not reflect the reality of the plaintiff’s allegations. The SMN coverage says little about allegations that racist language was used by management at Uncle Bubba’s, and the piece says nothing about the allegations that pornography was routinely seen by and showed to subordinate employees. As I noted in my first post Friday, those allegations seem to have been substantiated by other documents.

The SMN article today is a thorough examination of the narrow issue of Deen’s own use of the N-word, but the case is about a lot more than that.

BREAKING: Food Network says it won't renew Paula Deen's contract after admission she used racial slurs. -MM

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 21, 2013

It’s impossible to know at this point what factors were considered by the Food Network, but — as I noted in a post earlier today — Deen’s deposition is peppered with disturbing details about the management of Uncle Bubba’s. Even if one takes her at her word that she quit using the N-word many years ago, there were all sorts of ugly revelations that would be circulating endlessly.

And America’s food culture has undergone a considerable shift in recent years. As I noted in a post in 2011 — NYT: Growing number of Southern farmers “want to reclaim the agrarian roots of Southern cooking, restore its lost traditions and dignity” — we’ve been seeing a resurgence in traditional Southern cooking that predates the post-WWII ingredients so common in Deen’s recipes.

And it’s worth noting that Deen has been through various contract negotiations with Deen the Food Network, including in 2010.