McCourts Showing Lower Profile In Running The Dodgers

Frank (c) And Jamie (r) McCourt Keeping Lower Profile

Dodgers Owner Frank McCourt and his wife, Vice Chair & President Jamie McCourt, who bought the team in ’04, are “no longer making outrageous statements anymore, no longer firing high-profile employees with regularity and, coincidentally or not, no longer being publicly lampooned on a daily basis,” according to Tony Jackson of the L.A. DAILY NEWS. Since firing former GM Paul DePodesta and hiring Ned Colletti in October, the McCourts have “faded steadily into the background.” Frank McCourt said, “It’s a combination of things. Number one, we have had time to settle in. It takes time to get things right and establish a new culture, etc. But number two is that we have the right people in place.” Jackson wrote while the McCourts “never quite felt comfortable leaving the young DePodesta on his own,” they are “hard-pressed even now to admit that hiring DePodesta was a mistake, even though Colletti represents such a radical departure.” Jamie McCourt said, “The needs of the organization hadn’t changed. It was the landscape that had changed” (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 7/13).

JOHNSTON THE REASON: In L.A., Kevin Modesti wrote Dodgers Senior VP/Communications Camille Johnston, who was hired last October after previously serving as Senior White House Aide in the Office of the VP and Dir of Communications for Tipper Gore from ’99-’01, is “credited with creating a lower profile for the McCourts, letting Colletti and [manager Grady] Little speak for the club, and quieting the franchise’s reaction to negative press.” It “seems to be no coincidence ... that the club’s owners and executives stopped creating bad headlines almost as soon as Johnston settled into” the position (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 7/13).