Tribune Company files bankruptcy.
December 8, 2008 by Dusty
The Tribune Company owns the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs and was purchased by the idiot rich guy named Sam Zell, has filed for bankruptcy protection. From the NYT:
Tribune, which was acquired last year by billionaire real estate investor Samuel Zell, had hired bankruptcy advisers like Lazard and the law firm Sidley Austin in recent weeks as it negotiated with creditors over debt covenants. (Read the bankruptcy petition here.)
It is only the latest – and biggest – sign of duress for the newspaper industry yet. Several newspaper companies have struggled to cope with declining revenues and mounting debt woes. Tribune has pared back the newsrooms of many of its papers, and it sold off Newsday to Cablevision’s Dolan family earlier this year. It is unclear what Tribune’s filing means for other newspaper publishers on the brink.
Zell is one of the world’s biggest pricks and richest men. Somehow I find it hard to feel sorry for him and after reading in the last year how he structured the purchase….I find this all stinking to high heaven quite frankly. The jackass is listed as Tribune chairman and chief executive. The holdings are extensive for The Tribune Company:
The Tribune Company owns 23 TV stations and 12 newspapers, including two of the eight largest in the country by circulation. As of Sept. 30, The Los Angeles Times had weekday circulation of 739,000 and the Chicago Tribune had 542,000.
It is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out, and how many more newspaper jobs are lost.
Tags: Tribune Company files bankruptcy, Sam Zell
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Things began going south for the L.A. Times (in my estimation the flagship property of the Tribune Company) about 10 years ago when the Chandler family which were the controlling owners had no current heirs who were interested in the newspaper business. Otis Chandler, who presided during an era of greatness for the paper had retired and the family saw the writing on the wall in terms of the newspaper business model and decided to get out, so the L.A. Times and its sister media companies was sold to the suits who controlled the Chicago Tribune.
The ultimate fatal damage began immediately, it has been nothing but cost cutting for the L.A. Times in all the years since, when the Tribune Company got in to trouble, they sold out to Sam Zell, who had absolutely no experience in journalism or media, and no respect for journalism. The only way Zell was able to swing the deal was to become totally leveraged, the new owners who financed Zell were the employees, who have almost to a totality, all received the shaft.
The L.A. Times has been gutted starting with the original Tribune Company and will now be completely chopped up by Zell, who will likely walk away with more net money in his pocket, while world class journalists will walk a bread line, and the subscribers receive nothing more than a door stop, or carpet for their bird cages, where there was once a great newspaper with a history of Pulitzer prizes, journalistic leadership, and comprehensive, real news coverage.
I have been a reader of the L.A. Times since I could first read, a subscriber my entire life (even receiving the paper over seas via mail in the 1960’s) and I am just about to cancel my subscription. The quantity of information delivered by the L.A. Times has dropped to about a quarter of what it once was, and the quality, for the most part is mediocrity. Instead of original reporting we are seeing wire stories rehashed or substandard “original” stories, filed by lower paid (lower quality) staff from their other media properties.
As a subscriber I have accepted and would continue to pay a fair price to receive the newspaper, but they have let all of their subscribers down, they do not view the subscribers as their “customers”, they view the entities that they sell ads to as their true customers. Unfortunately they have failed to learn how to leverage the Internet, and instead have just stood by as the Internet has usurped their advertising revenue.
I am sick over what they have done to the L.A. Times, but I am even more fearful of what fate might befall the New York Times. I don’t want to have to rely upon Cable TV or dubious Internet sites to receive detailed, insightful, truthful, ethically reported news.
I grew up with the LA Times and Jim Murray also. My mom would write a personal letter to whichever Chandler was running the paper at the time if the paper was late. She would get back a personal reply and and extremely timely delivery!
With the Cubs hitting the market, it’s good to know Mark Cuban has his tit in the wringer and probably won’t be able to buy.
The Cubbies aren’t, thankfully, part of the bankruptcy, but still…its sad and very pathetic to see a company that has been in business for over 100 years hit this level.
When I was fresh out of high school, I applied for a job at the LA..my dream was to be a journalist. They didn’t hire me and I worked as a proof reader for the local rag in Lompoc CA instead.
I subscribed to the LAT when I lived in San Diego for decades…until they folded that up too.
well as the last chandler working for the times in the pressroom I feel some ambivalence towards family more to sam zell.can’t expect someone to flog a dead horse into the sunset so thankfully sam picked up the slack,sam being such an extereme asshole I am torn. I hope my friends and coworkers survive zells slide thru chapter 11 and 7 ,and the y get passed onto someone more concerned with quality journalism than a double digit r.o.c. number.
i hope sam gets relegated to trailer park whereupon he is evicted and tossd on the streets much like he has done to others.I love how he took control of the company with our employee stock,and then fired some of us lovely!i havent picked up a times unless i find one free at mcdonalds.
I echo your sentiments in your final paragraph regarding Sam Zell Mr. Chandler.
Thank you for stopping by.
Good luck to all those still employed at Zell’s papers. It is going to be a very rough ride.
Gawker has an interesting take on the Tribune’s troubles, if I read them correctly they are claiming Zell might have been involved in the Blogovich funny business:
http://gawker.com/5105613/did-blago-help-push-tribune-into-bankruptcy
Zell might have played along knowing what was coming down the pike for Blago Big Fella. I don’t think he was stupid enough to play ball with Blago…but ya never know!
[...] world reached a new low this week. As previously discussed here by Dusty in her posting titled Tribune company files bankruptcy, the company that owns two of our coutry’s largest, most influential newspapers is going down [...]