Newspaper Death Watch: Trib Goes to 11, NYT Mortgages the Farm
Newspaper insiders for the most part weren’t all that surprised to see the Tribune Company file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday. The Trib has been in trouble for some time, and it hasn’t been helped by high profile fights of the past two years by owner Sam Zell, who purchased the company in April of 2007, which saw him take the company private. Since then his fights with the leadership of the Los Angeles Times have achieved near legendary status.
The problem is that bankruptcy isn’t a complete answer for the Tribune Company. Perhaps they’d do best to do as Sam Zell suggested just a short time ago when the mortgage crisis was at the top of the news:
“…this country needs a cleansing. We need to clean out all those people who never should have been in houses in the first place.”
Perhaps indeed the newspaper industry also needs a cleansing, and all those who should never have owned newspapers should be cleaned out. For example, Sam Zell.