Tribune Prepares for Bankruptcy Filing

Wall Street Journal Online ^ | 7 December 2008 | N/A

[Erik Latranyi]

Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy-protection filing as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, opening a new front of trouble for the newspaper industry.

As Tribune continues discussions with its lenders to rework its debt load, the newspaper-and-television concern in recent days ...

[BurbankKarl]

With 98% of US journalists in the tank for Obama, you already have that.

Tribune still makes money...they just cant meet their debt payments.

[teletech]

And so was the Los Angeles Times, Phildelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, Time Magazine and many others. sigh

This begs the question did these liberal rags lead the nation left or was it the other way around?

[NonValueAdded]

Was this overheard in the boardroom: "we'd rather go broke and shut down than provide our readers with a balanced presentation?" The prevailing business model of the MSM seems to be ...

Better Red than Read; whoops, now we're Dead

[RayChuang88]

The biggest problem for newspapers today: they can't compete against the modern audience that demands near-instant delivery of the news and can now get it through 24-hour cable news channels and the public Internet. In short, newspapers have become the first victim of the "de-massification of the media" Alvin Toffler warned about way back in 1979 in his famous book The Third Wave.

[GerardKempf]

Are you high? The Tribune has been a very right leaning paper and thank god for them here in the Midwest - one of the only right leaning papers. Also, anybody that likes to see public companies file BK and f the stockholders and screw its employees is a socialist in my book. Put away the far right paranoia and work to save jobs. While I may not agree with every editorial for the most part this paper has been the most level thing coming out of Chicago.

[BillyBoy]

>> Are you high? The Tribune has been a very right leaning paper and thank god for them here in the Midwest - one of the only right leaning papers. <<

I think YOU'RE the one that's high. The Tribune hasn't been a "right-wing" paper in 40 years. Their idea of "balenced" perspective is to endorse every single left-wing socialist running in a competitive race in Illinois, plus one or two RINOs for good measure. They will NEVER be caught dead endorsing an actual conservative in a close race, except perhaps their 4-year predictable Presidential endorsements (they gave a half-assed endorsement to Bush in 2004 after spending the entire year bashing him in editorials for being too right-wing, and then damned him with faint praise). Of course they abandoned even the presidential endorsements this year with their glowing support of Hussein Obama.

Here's their Chicago area endorsements in 2008:

President
• Barack Obama (Democrat)
U.S. Senate
• Dick Durbin (Democrat )
U.S. House
• 1st District: Bobby Rush (Democrat)
• 2nd District: Jesse Jackson Jr. (Democrat)
• 3rd District: Dan Lipinski (Democrat)
• 4th District: Luis Gutierrez (Democrat)
• 5th District: Rahm Emanuel (Democrat)
• 6th District: Jill Morgenthaler (Democrat)
• 7th District: Steve Miller (Republican)
• 8th District: Melissa Bean (Democrat)
• 9th District: Jan Schakowsky (Democrat)
• 10th District: Mark Kirk (RINO)
• 12th District: No endorsement
• 13th District: Judy Biggert (RINO)
• 14th District: Bill Foster (Democrat)
Illinois Senate
• 5th District (West Side): No endorsement
• 6th District (North Side): John Cullerton (Democrat)
• 7th District (North Side): Heather Steans (Democrat)
• 9th District (north suburbs): Jeff Schoenberg (Democrat)
• 11th District (Southwest Side, west and southwest suburbs): No endorsement
• 14th District (South and Southwest Sides, southwest suburbs): No endorsement (can't support evil conservative over the ultra corrupt scumbag Emil Jones)

Illinois House
• 2nd District (Southwest Side): Ante "Tony" Marijan (Green)
• 11th District (North Side): John Fritchey (Democrat)
• 12th District (North Side): Sara Feigenholtz (Democrat)
• 14th District (Far North Side): Harry Osterman (Democrat)
• 17th District (north suburbs): Elizabeth Coulson (ultra RINO)
• 20th District (Northwest Side, northwest suburbs): Michael McAuliffe (Republican)
• 21st District (Southwest Side, southwest suburbs): No endorsement
• 22nd District (Southwest Side): Michael Madigan (Democrat)
• 26th District (South Side): William "Will" Burns (Democrat)
• 29th District (South Side, south suburbs): David Miller (Democrat)
• 39th District (Near Northwest Side): Maria Antonia "Toni" Berrios (Democrat)
• 40th District (Northwest Side): Deborah Mell (Democrat)
• 41st District (west suburbs): No endorsement
• 43rd District (northwest suburbs): Ruth Munson (RINO)
• 44th District (northwest suburbs): Fred Crespo (Democrat)
Cook County
• State's Attorney: Anita Alvarez (Democrat)
• Board of Review, 2nd District: No endorsement
• Board of Review, 3rd District: Larry Rogers Jr. (Democrat)

And here's their Chicago area endorsements in 2006:

U.S. House
1st District Bobby Rush (D)
2nd District Jesse Jackson Jr. (D)
3rd District Dan Lipinski (D)
4th District Luis Gutierrez (D)
5th District Rahm Emanuel (D)
6th District Tammy Duckworth (D)
7th District Danny Davis (D)
8th District Melissa Bean (D)
9th District No endorsement
10th District Mark Kirk (RINO)
11th District No endorsement
13th District Judy Biggert (RINO)

STATE OFFICES
GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Judy Baar Topinka (RINO) and Joe Birkett (RINO)
ATTORNEY GENERAL
Lisa Madigan (D)
SECRETARY OF STATE
Jesse White (D)
COMPTROLLER
Dan Hynes (D)
TREASURER
Christine Randago (RINO)

[bert]

re: Your profile....

“Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill”

[bert]

The presumption is that the AP and Reuters will continue tobe the sources. With the erosion of the purveyor base will come the erosion of the two providers.

The concept amounts to the tail wagging the newspaper dogs. In reality, no dogs no tails. The AP has acknowledged problems and may be very sick.

The process underway involves death or near death and replacement by some unknown but presently budding solution. News on paper printed once a day and delivered by hand to the reader is no longer viable. The news is too late and too expensive. The consumers to whom ads are directed no longer read the papers.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Despite it being a left leaning paper.

I do not rejoice any newspaper disappearing.

I have to agree. My concern is that freedom of the "press" may not automatically extend to electronic media. Especially if the "fairness doctrine" gets reinstated. Has the supreme court ever ruled that electronic media is guaranteed the same protections as print media?

The fallacy in that argument lies in the planted assumption that newspapers are free and independent. In truth, journalism is a singular noun. Journalism as we know it is a mid-Nineteenth Century development, a product of the development of the telegraph and of the Associated Press, which has been a monopolistic organization from its inception (and which was held by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act back in 1945).

That is the explanation for the transformation of the fiercely independent, openly political newspapers of the founding era (and into the middle of the Nineteenth Century) into the self-described "objective press" of today. That homogenization of reporting was the natural result of the acquisition by the newspapers of a (single) source of news which is not available to the general public except by reading the newspaper. The business model of journalism as we know it hinges on the perception that all those AP news stories are reliable and balanced, not hokum or propaganda. Thus, "all reporters are objective." That is a statement to which only a homogenized - not independent and therefore not free - press could subscribe, and to which the Associated Press and its membership must, of business necessity, subscribe.

The death of the "Fairness" Doctrine enabled the revival of a free press - in the form of talk radio. Don't be deceived by claims of "scarcity of bandwidth" or "monopolization of talk radio by the right." Or by claims that "the press" includes only ink-on-paper communication.

The Antifederalists who demanded a bill of rights in the Constitution were opposed by the Federalists, not because they opposed the rights in the first ten amendments but because they held that a bill of rights would not be exhaustive of the rights already implied in the Constitution and they feared that any rights not specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights would be denigrated - that the Bill would become a ceiling rather than a floor on the rights of the people. Consequently it is established jurisprudence that the body of the Constitution is to be read as the Federalists promoted it to the people who ratified it - as including within itself all the rights articulated in the Bill of Rights.

If you read the Constitution that way the words "the press" fade out, and words like "No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States" (Article 1 Section 9) come into focus. Because what the Associated Press and its membership has done is to lobby for a title of nobility - "the press" - which gives them privileges to be withheld from the people. "The freedom of . . . the press" is actually the right of the people to spend their own money to use technology to promote their own (political, religious, and other) opinions.

If you do not read "the press" as a ceiling on our rights, and if you read in Article 1 Section 8 that the federal government is explicitly authorized "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," you will find in the Constitution no warrant for the claim that the framers of the Constitution expected no advances in the arts of communication and that therefore the Constitution does not cover high speed presses, photography, telegraphy, telephony, sound recording, radio, mimeograph machines, movies, talking movies, television, photocopiers, hi-fi steros, computer/printer combinations, Compact Disks, HDTV, DVDs, satellite radio, the Internet and the worldwide web - or whatever comes next.

It is in my experience a great mistake to try to prove that journalism is not objective - for the simple reason that that is a political opinion. You would do just as well to expect to be able, in an hour's conversation, to convert a Democrat to a Republican. My point is not the mere fact that I can cite examples of tendentiousness in journalism until the cows come home, and my point is not simply that no one can prove that journalism is objective because lack of bias is an unprovable negative. My point is that I have a right to listen to Rush Limbaugh, provided only that he makes his program available to me on terms that I am able and willing to meet, without reference to what a politician or judge, or all of them, think of Rush Limbaugh's opinions. Just as surely as your garden variety "sheeple" has a right to listen to Katie Couric. A government which distinguishes between the two is not operating under the Constitution.

The Right to Know

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Uncledave]

Isn’t bankruptcy, merely the government redistributing wealth?

Nope, not at all.

[sam_paine]

The presumption is that the AP and Reuters will continue to be the sources. With the erosion of the purveyor base will come the erosion of the two providers.

Well, let's keep an eye on it and see.

My experience has been along the lines of cfrel's local paper experience.

The Ft Worthless Star Telegram and Dallas Morning Snooze over the years have come pretty much to be devoid of originally researched content, because I think, there is less risk of libel suits behind the comfy liability contracts of AP. Mostly AP and other wire "staff" in the byline, meaning the local editor doesn't have to worry about the content.

Even if all the paper-papers eventually disappear, (weren't books supposed to be replaced by the internet, too?) all of the other radio and news and internet online fronts will still use it as a script. CNN in the airports, for example, just puts stock video clips in front of chicks reading AP and Reuters headlines.

In an age where the Pres Elect was sending out teams of lawyers to intimidate and suppress dissent in locales (but won't even deign to respond to a citizen's lawsuit against him, I personally don't see the potential for a hard-nosed reporter to go toe-to-toe with these people without the classical scene of the paper company's backing, with the seasoned Editor, sleeves rolled up in the corner office Watergate style.

[Obadiah]

Is this not incredible? I mean these guys absolutely know that the American public has no confidence in the MSM. Poll after poll demonstrates that people believe the MSM is biased.

So what does the MSM DO about it? Absolutely nothing. They would rather commit suicide rather than address their elitism bias toward liberalism.

Well then, GOOD RIDDENCE!!

[abb]

Interesting thoughts. As citizen reporting becomes more commonplace, I think the law will adapt. Despite the RIAA lawsuits, music file-sharing wasn’t slowed in the least. I see the same with reporting.

And I also see the AP and Reuters folding. Without subscribers, they cannot stay in business. They never have done that much original reporting, compared to what they re-use from their subscribers.

They have never been anything but a distribution system.

[abb]

Of interest.

http://www.connpost.com/ci_11148817?source=email
Eyewitness reporting a huge change

[Grampa Dave]

The Zer0 owes winning all of his elections to the Tribune for spiking the stories about his mentors, criminal funding, black racist church and the Acorn connections.

If the Tribune had done a real job of journalism, the Zer0 would never have been elected to any office in Illinois let alone becoming an elected president.

The Zer0 may rescue the Trib as there are too many people, who could blackmail him like all of the Clintoon thugs blackmailing re his unnatural citizenship to run his government.

[Grampa Dave]

“You mean the Chicago mob machine can get a man elected President but can’t save it’s pals at the Tribune?”

I have the same questions/feelings:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2144624/posts?page=116#116

“The Zer0 owes winning all of his elections to the Tribune for spiking the stories about his mentors, criminal funding, black racist church and the Acorn connections in Chicago for a very long time.

If the Tribune had done a real job of journalism, the Zer0 would never have been elected to any office in Illinois let alone becoming an elected president.

The Zer0 may rescue the Trib as there are too many people, who could blackmail him like all of the Clintoon thugs blackmailing re his unnatural citizenship to run his government.”

[Charlespg]

Dosn’t bother me in the slightest

let the bloggers and Internet take over,the press is too politically biased to be of any use

[bcsco]

The problem with the Tribune and LAT and NYT is not that they are biased but that they are simply creating less and less credible news.

Newspapers have always been biased. This is why larger markets have supported multiple newspapers. They serve the biased needs of the total marketplace.

As for creating less credible news, I assume you mean a dearth in real investigative reporting. If so, I agree. Much is made over "journalism" today and little is said about "reporters" and reporting. I think the distinction has been lost within the news industry as a whole.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

Well said. Your posts are always worth reading. You should write a book!