One might take that either way. The shareholders didn't tender **because** they think mgmt will turn it around, or, they didn't tender because they think another company will pick up TribCo (presumably due to mgmt being incompetent, and the buyout therefore correspondingly cheap).
I don't have any dog whatever in this fight, but, that said, mgmt looks to me to be up the proverbial creek in a leaky canoe.
It seems CEO FitzSimons disingenuously proposed the buyback to stealthily entrench himself at the expense of his shareholders but Chandler greed ultimately outed FitzSimons' Machiavellian move before it became a fait accompli. LOL.