AMERICAblog: Publisher of Chicago Trib and LA Times files for bankruptcy
naschkatzehussein
· 11 months ago
The Chicago Tribune's problems go far beyond the current economic crisis, and I don't see how a stimulus package should help it. Those of us who are blogging here are partly an indication of its problems: the Internet is replacing printed media and even television. In the Trib's case, the quality of the paper has gone down, down, downhill because of its editorial content. I have a soft spot for the Trib, growing up with it, even though it has never, ever expressed my political views, but I thought it had a classier format than the Sun Times, and there were all those traditional touches like Injun Summer and the entertaining if exasperating arts critic Claudia Cassidy. But the Republicanism of today's Tribune is not the Republicanism of the Trib during the Eisenhower era and later. Mike Royko has been succeeded by the likes of expert innuendo thrower John Kass and editorial commentators like religous right nut Mona Charen.
Older_Wiser
· 11 months ago
This is what people with too much money do: a real estate mogul buys a newspaper publishing business? For chrissakes, suck it up, Zell.
I just feel sorry for the people losing their jobs (you know, the people who really work for their money).
Just shows rightwingers can fuck up anything--probably even a wet dream.
barkleyg
· 11 months ago
The Tribune bankruptcy is 10% newspaper industry and 90% SAM ZELL. This guy was a cancer before his highly leveraged purchase of an industry he had no knowledge or experience in., and he has destroyed a great paper and many people's lives.
SAM ZELL is one of the poster-boys for everything that is wrong with American business.
Jake In Music City
· 11 months ago
You said it before I could. I agree with this comment so strongly that I just had to post to say "I agree with this comment so strongly." If anyone has the time, just google Sam Zell and read away.
FunMe
· 11 months ago
Why is it that everytime there is a bush in the White House, he ends his tenure in DISASTER?
Do the people who voted for bush and are losing jobs, houses, etc. feel the least bit guilty for making such a wrong choice?
Bit NOLA
· 11 months ago
Journalism, like the auto industry, has come to the edge of a cliff and needs to figure out how to bridge the chasm.
Fine, if short term aid staves off hitting the bottom of the depression we are already in. Do it. But how many more billions do we have to give away next month? And the next?
It's gonna get much worse for everyone, and bailouts have to end sooner rather than later.
Sad to see the papers go (though I doubt they'll ever go completely away in this lifetime, just like autos). But this is our media, the electronic one, and journalism won't go away. Change happens in the present tense, and it's painful, but true.
And sometimes beautiful. But it's not beautiful times we're living in. A hundred years from now , those who look back at us will think us as antique as we think people of the early 19th Century were, running around wearing straw hats and catching trolleys in the cities.
We're rubes, too, even if we're on the cusp of whatever's happening in any field. Those dick's in the future will be rubes too.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, then borrow, borrow, borrow, till the day you HAVE to pay.
Indigo
· 11 months ago
Good! The Orlando Sentinel is one of the papers involved in the Tribune conglomerate.
Sam Zell, Chicago real estate mogul, huffed and puffed and strutted all over Orlando about going into journalism, insulted experienced news paper journalists, publically called one woman reporter a b***ch, said the public wants more pictures and less talk, stories about puppy dogs and pretty ladies, and mothers who murder their children. No more in-depth chatter about foreign nonsense, he decided.
Debtors' prison is too good for him. He stepped on too many toes here in Orlando. Let him eat crow.
Gosh, I don't want to be rude but I hope that sounds contemptuous.
Alfred
· 11 months ago
This situation is all Zell's own doing. He used borrowed money to buy the company, and now he can't pay back the money he borrowed.
This is not a problem of a poorly run organization, it is a problem of poorly financed ownership.
Bankrupt Mr. Zell, and let Tribune continue to operate.
elizabethcostello
· 11 months ago
Nothing the stimulus can do about this. The Tribune Company shouldn't have snapped up the Times Mirror company, and most importantly, the Zell $8 billion private buyback was completely insane. There was NO WAY it was ever going to work given the technological changes with the newspaper industry and the concomitant decreasing profit margins and share prices, and the crazy financing terms. No way ever, at least not on planet Earth. I feel terrible about what the Tribune employees have been and are going through, but as for Zell, it couldn't have happened to a worse person.
paulbe
· 11 months ago
Perhaps people are just fed up with professional liars feeding them slanted news.
paulbot5
· 11 months ago
all this "stimulus" caused the problem
jack
· 11 months ago
Glad to see it fail next will be the new york times which is also failing. people dont want to hear thier opinions just give us the news and let us decide. People no longer trust the newspapers and they are feeling it financial.
jebauer
· 11 months ago
I worked in publishing a long time. Loved it. But like the auto industry, it has failed, repeatedly, to see the writing on the wall. You must evolve as a business, and quite simply, neither has. Even worse, newspapers stopped reporting the news. Buh bye.
james k. sayre
· 11 months ago
Newspapers are being done in by free classified ads on internet web sites such as craig's list. There were no bailouts for buggy whip manufacturers back in 1910, so no bailouts needed for newspapers in the 21st century.
TomTallis
· 11 months ago
"All of the now privately held company’s equity is owned by an employee stock-ownership plan."
Uh, John... What equity? There is no equity when liabilities exceed assets.
pat
· 11 months ago
i suspect they mean common shares, which means the employees can kiss off their retirements.
Hawk
· 11 months ago
Problem, people still want to read the newspaper.
C~O~N~S~O~L~I~D~A~T~I~O~N
As soon as a real one appears, they will start reading again!
Until then, paper, Ink, distribution and everything else that goes along with the industry will suffer, oh and us too.
RitornaVincitor
· 11 months ago
To save time we should probably start posting the list of companies that are NOT filing for bankruptcy.
scottinsf
· 11 months ago
No tears shed from me. As far as I'm concerned just about all of the mainstream media can shrivel up and go away. I don't trust them anymore.
Quality reporting and real journalists will land on their feet with respectable organizations. Let the sell-out corporate dinosaurs die.
Free Thinker
· 11 months ago
They are probably failing because they are the liberal media. People are sick and tired of reading crap. It's hard to find a colum today where the author has not gone down on Obama. I don't know about you but, I like a little truth with my indoctrination.
michael_carr
· 11 months ago
When writing about any company entering bankruptcy, any mention of a stimulus is completely inappropriate when the company has been acquired with vast amounts of debt... unless, however, the debts are cancelled, the creditors directed to collect from the principals, and the company handed over to the employees. Then you can talk about a stimulus.
All Comments
I just feel sorry for the people losing their jobs (you know, the people who really work for their money).
Just shows rightwingers can fuck up anything--probably even a wet dream.
purchase of an industry he had no knowledge or experience in., and he has destroyed a great paper and many people's lives.
SAM ZELL is one of the poster-boys for everything that is wrong with American business.
Do the people who voted for bush and are losing jobs, houses, etc. feel the least bit guilty for making such a wrong choice?
Fine, if short term aid staves off hitting the bottom of the depression we are already in. Do it. But how many more billions do we have to give away next month? And the next?
It's gonna get much worse for everyone, and bailouts have to end sooner rather than later.
Sad to see the papers go (though I doubt they'll ever go completely away in this lifetime, just like autos). But this is our media, the electronic one, and journalism won't go away. Change happens in the present tense, and it's painful, but true.
And sometimes beautiful. But it's not beautiful times we're living in. A hundred years from now , those who look back at us will think us as antique as we think people of the early 19th Century were, running around wearing straw hats and catching trolleys in the cities.
We're rubes, too, even if we're on the cusp of whatever's happening in any field. Those dick's in the future will be rubes too.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, then borrow, borrow, borrow, till the day you HAVE to pay.
Sam Zell, Chicago real estate mogul, huffed and puffed and strutted all over Orlando about going into journalism, insulted experienced news paper journalists, publically called one woman reporter a b***ch, said the public wants more pictures and less talk, stories about puppy dogs and pretty ladies, and mothers who murder their children. No more in-depth chatter about foreign nonsense, he decided.
Debtors' prison is too good for him. He stepped on too many toes here in Orlando. Let him eat crow.
Gosh, I don't want to be rude but I hope that sounds contemptuous.
This is not a problem of a poorly run organization, it is a problem of poorly financed ownership.
Bankrupt Mr. Zell, and let Tribune continue to operate.
Uh, John... What equity? There is no equity when liabilities exceed assets.
C~O~N~S~O~L~I~D~A~T~I~O~N
As soon as a real one appears, they will start reading again!
Until then, paper, Ink, distribution and everything else that goes along with the industry will suffer, oh and us too.
Quality reporting and real journalists will land on their feet with respectable organizations. Let the sell-out corporate dinosaurs die.