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Remember Lee Abrams, the eccentric (some would say nutty) Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company best known for writing bizarre stream of conciousness memos that sound like the author is on an acid trip? Well, he and his memos are back to promote the launch of a new newscast at KIAH Channel 39 in Houston which will be notable for its lack of anchors or reporters. This development comes on the heels of the utter failure of another Abrams project launched with much enthusiasm last year at WSFL-TV in South Florida, The Morning Show. The sad fate of that...

Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishes it final print edition. So what kind of advice are newspapers getting from people whose job it is to help them remain in business? If they are relying upon advice from Lee Abrams, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company, the future of newspapers is indeed bleak. The advice offered by Abrams sounds like nothing more than the street corner rantings of an aging hippie who has endured way too many acid trips. Is your humble correspondent perhaps exaggerating a bit? Check out the latest Lee Abrams memo via The Daily Pulp and you...

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...

Please forgive your humble correspondent if he takes a bit of pride in being the first to recognize the inadvertent comedy genius of Lee Abrams, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company. Since I first reported on the hilarious antics of Abrams back in March, more and more people, especially those in the newspaper business, have learned to appreciate the comedy material provided by his many memos consisting of a bizarre mixture of upbeat optimism and New Age psychobabble. Although the author or authors are anonymous, one suspects the parody memos were written by a journalist in the Tribune organization upon whom the...

I'll say one thing for the Tribune Company's new "Chief Innovation Officer," Lee Abrams. He might not be able to solve the declining newspaper circulation problems but he is absolutely irrepressible in a very funny way. On the heels of his recent suggestion that the Los Angeles Times could solve some of its problems by repainting its news vans, we have yet another of Abrams' famous memos which goes in all directions powered by a generous dose of psychobabble. You might need to channel the late Timothy Leary to interpret Abrams' latest memo, THINK PIECE: BUSTING DENIALS AND ASSUMPTIONS,  issued last Monday...

The Titanic has hit an iceberg and is sinking. Not to worry, just paint the lifeboats with a new color scheme and things will improve. As ridiculous as that sounds, it is not much different than the proposal of the Tribune Company Chief Innovation Officer, Lee Abrams, who proposed changing the color of Los Angeles Times vans: Being too close to it. LAT has about 20 vans...but they're all Black? Hmmm. Maybe they should be painted in LAT colors. There ARE more than a few commuters driving around down there. Apparently Abrams thinks basic black is not exciting enough but...

When I last reported on the hilarious musings of the Tribune Company's new chief innovation officer, Lee Abrams, little did I realize that he would provide us with a continuous comedy act of major proportions. His previous observations wandered from looking upon newspapers as the "new rock 'n' roll" to the need for soul all interspersed with quotations from everybody from John Cleese to Carl Jung. Yes, he was good for some bellylaughs but now he has exceeded himself in the inadvertent humor department with a memo to the Tribune staffers that rivals the best of comedy skits. Appropriately, Abrams...

Imagine if a comedy script is submitted to a movie producer. It would be about a major newspaper conglomerate so desperate to turn around the plunging circulation numbers of its various newspapers that it hires a wacky radio consultant as a Chief Innovation Officer to help turn it around. The radio consultant is so strange that he believes the way to improve the circulation numbers is to ensure that the newspapers have soul. He plans to do this by treating newspapers as the new rock 'n' roll.  The wacky Chief Innovation Officer announces his plans in a seemingly endless  e-mail message that wanders aimlessly for 5...