Sam Zell

It's an incredible thing: Hit the submit button, and after several hours of elaborate and costly printing and distribution, your content is before the reader! At about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, if you wanted a copy of the morning papers in the Tribune section of Media Pavilion 2 there were still plenty of choices. The reporters sitting in here are filing material out to The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, The Sun-Sentinel, The L.A. Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel and The Daily Press. And very few of them are reading actual paper.

By the way, also sitting in their tent is the orphaned Newsday.

Jim Romenesko has posted a press release from the Chicago Tribune announcing the promotion of Jane Hirt to managing editor. Ms. Hirt had been the editor of RedEye, the Tribune's young, hip [sic] paper, not to be mistaken with Fox News' young, hip [sic] late night show where bloggers are stars. (In fact, the Tribune Company tried to get Fox News to change the show's name in 2007.)

Ms. Hirt was named to Chicago Business' "40 Under 40," in 2006, telling writer Gregory Meyer, "We know our audience is interested in reading a little bit about foreign and national news, but by far, our research and all our readers tell us that local news and pop-culture news is what they want.  read more »

Shortly after a magnitude-5.8 earthquake hit Los Angeles this afternoon, the L.A. Times Web site went down. Managing editor John Arthur explained in an (obviously dashed off given the circumstances) email to staff: "our website server is staggering because of heavy volume. the page actually has been updated and may load for soe people. keep refreshing."

We're talking to a few Times staffers via IM. Are people freaking out? "not so much on my floor. I was in the cafeteria and saw them filing out. they said it was 'standard,' that we had to [evacuate]. But I went back to my desk to get my cell, and everyone was here," one tapepd in. Another: "everyone is kinda joking now and getting back to work."

And now for the news!

Newsday, you're free of Sam Zell!

The $650 million transaction that has brought the Long Island daily into the hands of Charles and Jim Dolan closed today.

It should be cause for grand celebration. But then again, only days after the deal was announced, a Newsday reporter told The Observer, "People are so beaten down here there’s not much of anything that could cause much of a reaction."

Two and a half weeks ago Chris Hine, who this fall will enter his senior year at The University of Notre Dame, was saying his goodbyes to staffers he'd met at the beginning of his summer internship at the sports desk of The Los Angeles Times.

They'd been around at the beginning to help him out with stories, give him pointers, and occasionally have him make a call for a fresh take on a bit of news. And then, with one of the recent rounds of layoffs at the newspaper, they were gone, leaving the intern behind.

The firing of these mostly younger reporters - people practically straight out of college - hit home for Mr.  read more »

Jim Romenesko posted the above photograph of a Sam Zell-themed cake served up by employees at the Tribune Company's Hartford Courant. As Mr. Romenesko wrote, "A Courant staffer couldn't resist poking Zell's eyes out—on the cake, of course."

Mmmm. Revenge has never tasted so ... bitter.

Sam Zell and Randy Michaels are about to end the Sunday Book Review at the L.A. Times and book reviews editors past are not pleased about it. Four former editors of the section—Sonja Bolle, Digby Diehl, Jack Miles and Steve Wasserman—wrote in a joint-letter to L.A. Observed complaining about the decision.

To be sure, no section of any newspaper can remain hostage to past ways of covering the news of the day. We are convinced, however, that the way forward is to increase coverage of our literary culture—a culture that every day is more vibrant and diverse in the thriving megalopolis of Los Angeles.  read more »

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Newly named Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli's wife, Maggie Farley, the United Nations reporter for the L.A. Times, says she quit right before the paper announced layoffs in order to "save a body." And, not surprisingly, she doesn't care much for what's happening to the paper. She tells L.A. Observed's Kevin Roderick:

"I resigned last week in the hopes that it would save a body, and with all the changes in our family and at the paper, it felt like a good time to leave and try something new. I am proud to have been part of one of the largest and strongest foreign staffs in the country, and am disheartened by what has been done to our great newspaper.  read more »

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150 reporters, editors and designers at The Los Angeles Times are packing their boxes and heading home for good this week, but out of the paper's press department that's not the big news at all!

Last night, John Conroy, one of their spokesmen, sent reporters an email about a new blog the newspaper's Web site, latimes.com, is launching.

"Thought you might want to know about 'Hero Complex,' a really cool blog we’re launching," he writes. "It’ll be chock full of insider scoop from the world of comic books, sci fi, genre film/TV and all other heroic pursuits.

Right. Forgive us for initially thinking that "Hero Complex" was referring to Sam Zell and interim-publisher Randy Michaels.  read more »

Internal emails are circulating in the Los Angeles Times with some of the 150 names who are getting laid off at the paper. One staffer showed us the names of one email that's going around in the features department. We've sent out emails to each of them requesting confirmation. Here's who has confirmed for us so far:

We'll keep updating as they come in:

Kevin Bronson: old weekend editor, club music writer

Corie Brown: wine reporter. Corie writes: "They’ve eliminated the job of wine writer. There won’t be anyone on the features staff who writes about wine or spirits. They will go all freelance."

Janet Cromley: health writer

Casey Dolan: music writer.  read more »

As you may already know, yesterday was a dark day for the newspaper industry: Layoffs at The Los Angeles Times; buyouts at The Wall Street Journal; the departure of The Chicago Times' editor-in-chief; The New York Times' stock price dipped to a decade-low as shares of McClatchy, Gannett, and News, Corporation also took hits.

Today, the hits just keep on coming. Some lowlights after the jump:  read more »

The L.A. Times' publisher David Hiller is out.

Here's the memo from Randy Michaels:

I want to let you know that David Hiller has decided to step down as publisher of The Los Angeles Times, effective immediately. David took over as publisher in October 2006, during a difficult period for the newspaper and has performed with distinction since that time. During the last six months, he has helped The Times begin making the transition to new ownership, facing new realities. Part of that transition must now include a new publisher.

We are already in the process of identifying the right person to lead The Times going forward.  read more »

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The writing has been all the wall for weeks and now the carnage has been unleashed: the L.A. Times is cutting loose 150 newsroom positions, and 250 overall. Pink slips come by Labor Day. This news comes only a few months after the paper let go 36 newsroom jobs through buyouts, and puts the total newsroom number at about 700, down from the 1,200 it had just seven years ago. 

Russ Stanton's sobering memo is here.  

This morning on CNBC's Squawk Box, Carl Quintanilla interviewed Tribune owner Sam Zell about everything from the housing market to the elections to the Chicago Cubs. (This comes via Jim Romenesko.)

When the subject turned to the advertising market, Mr. Zell asked, "What ad market?" Mr. Quintanilla clarified that he meant newspaper advertisers, which prompted the outspoken Mr. Zell to bark, "I'm trying to find one of 'em!"

Here's how Mr. Zell described his newspaper business:

I think the case of Tribune, really, or newspapers in general basically comes down to producing a newspaper that the customer is willing to pay for.  read more »

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... Look at real estate in other American cities. And what better cities for comparison than the nation's second and third largest?

Tribune Company potentate Sam Zell is considering selling the Chicago Tribune Tower and the Times Mirror Square complex, home of the Los Angeles Times. He could get as much as $150 million for the Tribune Tower and $235 million for the Times Mirror compex, The Wall Street Journal reports.

A little perspective: Were the 950,000-square-foot Tribune Tower in Manhattan, it would likely fetch as much as $1,000 a square foot, even in this current, rather bearish market. That means Mr. Zell could get nearly $1 billion from its sale. In Chicago, he's lucky if he gets 15 percent of that.

Just sayin'.

Six days ago, L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton did a Q&A with Mediabistro and he was asked if things were finally getting back to normal at the embattled paper.

"I think they're starting to [quiet down] and I think our morale is beginning to come back to where people are focused solely on doing great work and good stories and terrific journalism."

Then this week happened.  read more »

That's what Richard Perez-Pena asks in this morning's Times, and he hears a mixed response.

A former executive at Gannett, Allen Neuharth, says that Zell is just doing what he has to do. In order to prevent newspapers to go the way of the steel industry in the 1980s, preemptive steps have to be made.  read more »

They've got to be quaking in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Times reported today that Sam Zell said yesterday on a first quarter conference call that they need significantly fewer bodies to make Tribune into a successful company. Tribune business people, led by CEO Randy Michaels, counted column inches produced by each reporter and realized that, hell, they don't need so many people! From the Times report:  read more »

They've got to be quaking in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Times reported today that Sam Zell said yesterday on a first quarter conference call that they need significantly fewer bodies to make Tribune into a successful company. Tribune business people, led by CEO Randy Michaels, counted column inches produced by each reporter and realized that, hell, they don't need so many people!   read more »

"What has become clear as we have gotten intimately familiar with the business is that the model for newspapers no longer works," said Sam Zell in a memo he just sent out to Tribune staffers.

So everything is getting trashed and reworked! There are going to be redesigned newspapers, redesigned Web sites, redesigned business structures.  read more »

The Dolans win the bidding for the Long Island daily for $650 million. The deal is structured the way Sam Zell needed it to be--the Dolans pick up 97 percent of the company, while the Tribune company retains 3 percent. Here's the release:

CABLEVISION TO ACQUIRE 97% STAKE IN NEWSDAY MEDIA GROUP THROUGH PARTNERSHIP WITH TRIBUNE COMPANY IN A $650 MILLION TRANSACTION

Returns Newsday to Long Island-based Ownership After Nearly 40 Years  read more »

Later this morning, Newsday should belong to the Dolans.

Their $650 million bid will likely be accepted by Tribune owner Sam Zell later this morning, and the only thing that stands in the way are "minor details," said Charles Dolan in an interview last night with Newsday. The Times reports that Charles and James Dolan were in Chicago two weeks ago talking to Sam Zell, and Cablevision bankers and lawyers are there now hashing out the final terms of the deal.  read more »

Rupert Murdoch was standing in a deep corner of the Rose Hall at about 7:30 p.m. last night to toast his fellow influencers: It was the Time 100 celebration, an event that drums up publicity for the magazine's decreasingly influential list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The day before, Mr. Murdoch had promised investors and reporters listening in on a News Corp. investors' call that he'd prevail in his purchase of Newsday over rival bidders Mort Zuckerman and the Dolans.  read more »

Rupert Murdoch said he "absolutely" trusts Sam Zell to sell him Newsday—after all, Mr. Zell is a man of his word, right?

"We're hoping to wrap it up within the next week, and I don't mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days. It takes two to agree, but we're at a pretty advanced stage. I trust Mr. Zell absolutely. He's famous for being a man of his word. We think everything's in hand."  read more »

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Sam Zell--Tribune owner, real estate mogul, hog-lover (and by hog, we mean motorcycle)--says commercial real estate, especially in dense urban cities like Manhattan, will weather this financial storm just fine, thanks to renewed investment in mortgage-backed securities and foreign buyers.

``After they get through bashing George Bush, the very next question is, `Where's my visa?''' Mr. Zell told Bloomberg News during an interview in New York City. ``There is not another environment in the world that matches the U.S. in terms of opportunity, creativity, acceptance of change, acceptance of failure."

Mr. Zell was less bullish, however, about those repositories of the hellish known as the suburbs.  read more »

On Friday, April 25, Redbelt, a riveting David Mamet cops-and-con-men drama set in the world of professional jujitsu, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The cool table at the after-party, held at the Honey nightclub on West 14th Street, included Mr.  read more »

And how was your day? If you're a media critic or reporter, it was anything but slow.

Starting last night when "Time Reporters" broke the news that Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli would be leaving the paper followed closely by The Wall Street Journal's Merissa Marr reporting Sam Zell's Tribune Co. was "closing in on an agreement to sell its Long Island newspaper Newsday" to her paper's parent company, News Corp., this was a day of constant scoops and fast (sometimes loose) seat-of-the-pants analysis.  read more »

Sam Zell sent out a company-wide email last night, and reemphasized, in slightly different words, that there are people interested in Newsday. While speaking about the "disposition front," he says there have been "specific inquiries" about Newsday. Here's the entire memo:

Lender Call Recap  read more »

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Since Sam Zell acknowledged for the first time today that there are outside parties asking about Newsday, the paper's publisher, Tim Knight, was forced to acknowledge it as well. He has just sent a memo out to his staff, explaining that he knows "this creates uncertainty." The memo is revealing since it seems to show that Mr. Knight knows as much as we know: not much.  read more »

Sam Zell was asked about the potential sale of Newsday in a conference call with investors, and said there's an interest among outsiders but no decision has been made yet.

"As we previously acknowledged, we have been approached by a number of parties that have a keen interest," he said, when in fact it's the first time he's acknowledged this publicly. "We have reached no conclusions with anybody at this juncture. And we’re discussing if that does or does not make sense for us and the Tribune Company going forward."  read more »

The Tribune Company conference call is still going on. In introductory remarks, Sam Zell told investors that when he bought Tribune there was originally a “goal to preserve everything together.” Presumably he means all the newspapers, Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs, and the broadcasting properties. But the “significant erosion” of advertising money and revenue drops in the newspaper industry, he said, has “certainly put that plan into some question. And we’re forced to consider the divestiture of some of our assets.”

Word was spreading last week that Sam Zell was in deep danger of credit default, but there might be an out (in fact, it's an out that Mr. Zell seems to already have begun working on). Reuters is reporting:  read more »

According to Richard Pérez-Peña, people who have been awed and amused by Sam Zell's dirty mouth have been "twittering" and "tut-tutting" about more serious matters lately. In today's Times, he writes that Mr. Zell is in danger of falling into credit default.  read more »

Postcard From the Edge: The New York Times' Baghdad Bureau blog features a heartfelt essay by Mudhafer al-Husaini, a young Iraqi employee of the paper, entitled My Generation, in which al-Husaini tells of college life immediately following the fall of Baghdad: "Four years which were supposed to be my prettiest years ever, because you don’t get such a chance twice in Iraq, became my worst."

The Sound of Silence: In The Guardian, writer Nicholas Lezard profiles the legendary Moxon Garbutt, a writer whose alleged raison d’être "was to leave no trace of himself behind, except his influence—and even that to be ambiguous and tentative." For some strange reason, all the commenters on the site think a famous writer who never wrote a word is an April Fool's prank. Lezard jumps into the fray to declare "Moxon Garbutt is as real as you or I. I can't think why everyone assumes this is an April Fool." He would've been more convincing if he said nothing at all.

Speaking of Fools...: Didja hear the one about the Tribune Company changing it's name to ZellCoMediaEnterprises Inc.? We're laughin' all the way to our buyouts. (WSJ via Romenesko)

Featuring a Cast of Over 4,000: ABC News' Marcus Baram reports that Oliver Stone's W—about a humble, self-made man who remade the world in his humble image—begins shooting this month with Josh Brolin as George W. Bush. Hey, wait, is it a comedy in the spirit of Dr. Strangelove? "In one scene, Bush practices his parachute landing in the White House pool but forgets to properly release the harness and sinks to the bottom. In another scene, Rumsfeld doodles a drawing of Condoleeza Rice standing on a piano with a globe spinning on her finger."

On Jan. 15, Sam Zell dropped by the bleak house that is the Melville, N.Y., headquarters of Newsday, Long Island’s newspaper.

It was to be a pep talk: The last decade, characterized by its nearly annual tradition of soul-wrenching job cuts, was over. “We’ve got to get off our ass,” he said to the assemblage of reporters and salesmen; it went over well, less like a scolding than a slap on the butt from Coach.

Two months later, a somber group showed up at the Newsday auditorium for cannoli, pecan pie and coffee to say goodbye to the 36 newsroom buyouts Tribune had exacted from the paper, including three national reporters, several business reporters, its features editor, its movie editor and two critics. (Some reporters were taken off other desks and transferred to the Long Island desk.)  read more »

Ante up!

Now suddenly everyone is interested in Newsday. The New York Times is reporting that a Manhattan media blockbuster trio is "in discussions" to buy the Melville-based newspaper: Rupert Murdoch, James Dolan and Mort Zuckerman. Sam Zell decides who's the winner.

It sets up a satisfying auction between Mr. Murdoch (Post-owner) and Mr. Zuckerman (Daily News-owner) and Mr. Dolan, who owns MSG, the Knicks, Rangers and Cablevision.  read more »

At 4 p.m. today Newsday chief editor John Mancini is meeting with reporters and staffers to discuss job cuts at the paper. This will be his second meeting; the first one was on Friday.

We just got an account of what happened on Friday from a reporter who was present:  read more »

It's been a miserable day on Long Island.

"It’s definitely more than everybody expected," said Zachary Dowdy, a reporter and representative to the Local 406 that represents Newsday employees, of the job cuts announced today at the Long Island daily.

A spokeswoman told us earlier that out of 120 employees, 25 newsroom jobs would be lost. But a senior newsroom source has told us that the number will actually be bigger: Somewhere closer to 30 to 40 jobs will be cut (25 of those will be unionized employees).  read more »

Well! While I was away at an interview for a couple of hours this afternoon, everything at Newsday blew up. All in all, 120 employees are losing a job, and the cuts start today (we do not have a clear indication of how many jobs in the newsroom will be lost). I'll have updates as they come in, but the mood over there is apparently bleak--significantly worse than it was earlier this week when everyone was expecting these cuts as we reported this week.  read more »

Before Sam Zell gets down to the dirty business of letting go some Newsday employees, he went down to the Washington bureau of the Tribune Company. While there, he managed to upset just about everyone.  read more »

It’s been a jittery two weeks in Melville.

Over the next week, Newsday reporters and editors are expecting an announcement about job cuts. Even veterans of the Vlad the Impaler year of 1995, in which Times Mirror ordered the elimination of 800 jobs from a payroll of 3,200, contemplate the coming week with dread.

“To be honest with you, it’s really grim here,” said James Bernstein, a business reporter and 30-year-veteran.  read more »

The Los Angeles Times has a new editor, according to a press release that just went out.

"The Los Angeles Times Media Group (LATMG) today unveiled significant changes to its organization and leadership team, including the announcement that Russ Stanton has been named Los Angeles Times Editor," the release reads in part. And this from publisher David Hiller: “Russ Stanton combines great personal leadership, communication skills, the highest journalistic standards and a commitment to excellence, and has been championing much of our work to become a truly multimedia news organization that’s a relevant and engaging part of the 24-hour-a-day world of news and information.”

As we reported yesterday, the choice of an editor to replace Jim O'Shea has divided the newsroom.  read more »

As we documented this morning, there's a big divide over who should run the L.A. Times, and before Sam Zell and publisher David Hiller announce their choice, they're getting some dirty work out of the way: Job cuts are on the way.

Mr. Hiller writes that the paper will elimiminate 100-150 positions at the Times, which includes ending open positions, and laying some off. Sam Zell writes in his own e-mail that he wants to add staff some day, but: "Unfortunately, I can't turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months." Mr. Zell said there will be job cuts at all Tribune papers.

Click "read more" to see both memos.  read more »

Sam Zell, the Rabelaisian real estate billionaire who bought The Los Angeles Times’ parent company for $8.2 billion in December, went out to Los Angeles last week to shake things up at the left-coast newsroom notorious for its turmoil—overturns, layoffs, bad management.  read more »