Posted on 09/26/2006 7:03:23 AM PDT by abb
Imagine buying the most expensive house on a good-looking block that appears to be on the upswing. Within three years, the neighborhood craters, your oldest kid starts backtalking and your spouse pesters you to sell the house and get out. Meanwhile, you're stuck with a fat mortgage.
That's pretty much what life is like at the Tribune Co. these days.
A boardroom fight over the company's limping stock price has caused anxiety in Tribune newsrooms around the country, from an open revolt by the top editor in Los Angeles to "fear and loathing" about potential job cuts among reporters and editors at some of the company's Washington bureaus, according to staffers there.
Dissident board members have lost confidence in Tribune management and seek to break up the company to boost stock price. At a board meeting last week, they forced the rest of the board to explore restructuring and divestiture plans, setting a quick Dec. 31 deadline for options. Tribune has 11 newspapers and 26 television stations; the stations appear the most vulnerable to sale.
Chairman and chief executive Dennis FitzSimons is scheduled to visit Tribune's local paper, the Baltimore Sun, for an all-hands staff meeting today. He arrives after delivering a less-than-reassuring statement to employees after last week's board meeting: "Everything is on the table."
The same problem has been plaguing the nation's other iconic nameplates of the print industry over the past few years. Slumping Knight Ridder Inc. was forced to sell out to McClatchy Co., which dismantled the venerable chain. The New York Times Co. just reported August revenue numbers, company executives have taken a pay cut, and the company dumped its television stations to raise cash.
The hard times have been toughest on large newspapers, where readers have a variety of sources...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ping
But, they brought it on themselves.
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B295B238E%2DF6BF%2D47A4%2DB062%2D5BBE164F0DC0%7D&source=blq%2Fyhoo&dist=yhoo&siteid=yhoo&print=true&dist=printTop
JON FRIEDMAN'S MEDIA WEB
What the hell is going on in the media?
Commentary: Trib chaos, C-vision fiasco, scribes sentenced
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:07 AM ET Sep 25, 2006
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- What the hell is going on in the media world?
A: Put simply, the media are going through convulsions A lot of the headlines these days make very little sense to me. Consider that: -- The Tribune Co. (TRBTribune Company
TRB ) , one of the storied names in American newspaper history, is in utter chaos. How serious has it gotten? Standard & Poor's on Friday cut its ratings on Tribune. We continue to witness a sorry corporate soap opera, which appears to be pointing to a sale, eventually, of its once-glittering asset, the Los Angeles Times;
Jon is starting to sound like one of us now.
Took him long enough to figure it out, lol...
Jon's turn around and waking up to the reality of the MSM seems to be rather recent to me.
I had given up on him because of his protective zeal of the MSM.
Now, he throwing harpoons at them with Molotov cocktails attached to the harpoons.
The beat goes on...
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. :)
Thanks for the ping.
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