Sam Zell Isn't Pretending Anymore

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?