Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Salivates Over Obama Victory

NewsBusters ^ | November 13, 2008 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

The Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company, Lee Abrams, is salivating all over himself in excitement over the ways that corporation's newspapers could capitalize on Barack Obama's election. If you think Abrams couldn't top himself with his idea of boosting the circulation of the Los Angeles Times by repainting its news vans with different colors, he gives it a good try this time mixed with his usual unintentional humor. Here are some of Abrams' psychedelically tinged thoughts on Obama and newspapers as relayed by Bob Norman's The Daily Pulp (emphasis mine):

November 10, 2008
THINK PIECE: THE OBAMA WAKE UP CALL

The demand for last Wednesday's post election papers is obviously enormous. If there's ever an indicator that newspapers are timeless, this is it. The wake up call last week (like $200 copies on eBay) spurred a lot of thinking and action across the Tribune Nation. Now, as the march to the inauguration begins is when we can:

a) Capitalize on it
Or
b) Let other media steal it from us.

Some thoughts--

[PJ-Comix]

The L.A. Times had the chance to dramatically boost it's circulation and web viewers by releasing the Khalidi video but blew it.

[IbJensen]

He’ll be looking for a job before he knows it.

[NCC-1701]

The guy in the picture looks like Ron Jeremy. Probably has the same morals.

[Cheerio]

When are the newspapers going to stick their grubby hands into the Federal bailout trough? After all they are a protected class in the framers mind - certainly they should be saved before AmEx credit cards and Detroit big 3. /sarc

[BigBobber]

Print newspapers should be banned. The environmental toll for these use-once-and-throw-away rags is huge. How come Algore never frets about that?

[pepsi_junkie]

His ideas come down to turning the paper into a press release for Obama. Not reporting but rather doing stories on famous black people, great elections of the past (JFK and FDR listed as examples so I guess it is great elections of democrats) etc. And it will all be "collectible"! Total BS, this guy is living in a fantasy world.

How do I get his job? I have ideas which are just as stupid!

[Dilbert San Diego]

Al Gore is guilty of selective outrage. Liberals generally are guilty of being outraged about certain specific things, and ignoring other matters that don’t fit into their political agenda.

To the liberals/radicals/anarchists of the world, politics is first, last, and everything. Whatever advances their cause is what they will be outraged about. Anything else doesn’t matter to them. A good example is these PETA people, who want to save the animals. I heard one of them interviewed once, and talked about the lives of animals being important, and saving their lives, etc. He was asked about abortion and euthanasia (sp?) and saving human life, and he hemmed and hawwed and had no intelligible answer about human life. He was only concerned about animal life.

[ikka]

Ron Jeremy probably has more morals than this guy.

[sarasota]

I remember Murdoch being quoted as saying that if O won he’d sell more newspapers. Pie in the sky?

[bigbob]

I’m going to stick up for Lee Abrams here. His background is in radio and he’s a creative genius who helped create XM Radio. I don’t know what his politics are, but the Republican party for one could use some creative and marketing geniuses.

When we judge people by their appearance what does that say about us?

[reagan_fanatic]

Looks like a fat Barney Miller.

[6SJ7]

Print newspapers should be banned.

So true. The ink is hazardous. It is a waste of energy to print paper which is used for one day. The paper requires transportation to the printing plant requiring more energy, then the energy to print the newspaper, more energy to distribute copies by truck, and yet more energy to collect and dispose/recycle the paper.