Here's what the owner of Tribune Co./Sun-Sentinel recently told the Baltimore Sun:
“The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don’t have much of a future."
How far we've come from a few months ago, when Zell was all excited about the vast potential in the news game. Writes the New York Times' David Carr of Zell and other recent newspaper buyers:
"These are all smart businesspeople, with significant success in other endeavors, who took a hard look at the wave-tossed publishing sector and appointed themselves as life savers. And very soon after jumping in, they too began foundering in the tall waves."
Zell is now putting Newsday, one of the company's marquee publications, on the auction block. I think it's a good move that could help plug some of the leaks on the Tribune ship, but we'll see.
Also, remember that report on attorney-murder suspect Tony Villegas from NBC-6? Well the exclusive information WTVJ obtained -- including an email about Villegas from victim Melissa Britt Lewis -- was apparently supplied by a BSO jail employee named Divan Hicks-Badger, who wasn't authorized to give out the information, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
Now prosecutor Howard Scheinberg is getting on his high horse about the "unlawful disclosure." Please Howard, shut up. When you put a man in jail in America you're supposed to tell the public why. What are you going to argue next, that Villegas is an enemy combatant?
Did anyone really think that Zell was going to take the helm at Tribune and NOT do something like this? It was just a matter of time before he started to sell off some of the various pieces of the print publishing division.
And in this financial climate, maybe unloading a few of Tribune's daily publications isn't such a bad idea.
Whatever happens, Zell undoubtedly is going to make some big changes for Tribune and it's various news outlets.
After all, Zell has been a successful businessman in the real world for years. He obviously understands how to establish and maintain positive cash flow for a powerful, privately run company. You have to give the man credit for knowing how to do that.
Most newspaper chains these days are convinced that the only way they can continue to make a profit is by cutting their own resources and staffs, i.e., cutting their own necks. You can only do that so many times before there's nothing left to cut.
Who knows? Maybe Zell is on to something.
Should be interesting to watch the Newsday development as it continues to unfold.
Posted at: March 24, 2008 10:07 AM