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Topic Archive: Sam Zell
Intriguing story out of the Chicago Tribune (via Romenesko) says that negotiations with big creditors of the bankrupt Tribune Company could lead to chairman Sam Zell losing his role. Details...
Posted June 7, 2009 8:33 PM
Former Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller has been appointed president and chief executive of Chicago's McCormick Foundation, which has been the charitable arm of the Tribune Company. Hiller worked...
Posted May 18, 2009 2:56 PM
Sam Zell's bankrupt Tribune Company is facing an Internal Revenue Service audit of the ESOP part of the transaction that allowed Zell to take control of Tribune. The IRS "disclosed...
Posted May 13, 2009 12:09 AM
The bankruptcy judge just gave the Tribune Company permission to pay $13 million in bonuses to stop selected staffers from leaving, but said no to $2 million in pending severance...
Posted May 12, 2009 2:42 PM
The Tribune Co. has asked the bankruptcy court for permission to make severance payments to 70 employees who left last year — and a more sensitive request to pay $13...
Posted April 22, 2009 2:39 PM
Variety columnist and blogger Brian Lowry wasn't impressed by L.A. Times columnist-blogger Patrick Goldstein's recent critique of the trade paper and Peter Bart. Lowry's open letter to Goldstein gets a...
Posted April 16, 2009 12:18 PM
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took his campaign for state propositions 1A through 1F to the Los Angeles Times building tonight, telling an invited crowd of opinion shapers and readers that "the...
Posted April 15, 2009 11:05 PM
The U.S. labor department has subpoenaed Tribune Co. in an investigation connected to the stock-ownership plan that was a key feature of Sam Zell's 2007 deal to take Tribune private,...
Posted April 10, 2009 3:13 PM
Columbia Journalism Review rounds up the day's media hijinks, creative and not. The rating for Tribune's fake press release: "pretty lame." Really, should a bankrupt, flailing company be reminding people...
Posted April 1, 2009 3:21 PM
Tribune master Sam Zell, trying to restore his stature as an astute investor "after his disastrous buyout of Tribune Co.," has surfaced as an unlikely player in a controversy in...
Posted March 30, 2009 11:30 AM
Tribune acknowledged that chairman Sam Zell was interviewed in January by federal prosecutors as a "potential witness" in the criminal investigation of former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich. Zell also...
Posted March 11, 2009 10:05 PM
One of Sam Zell's quirks is that he sends out an annual gift and personal take on the year to friends and colleagues. Sharon Waxman at The Wrap digs up...
Posted February 3, 2009 11:39 PM
Maybe this has been up for awhile, but it was just pointed out to me today. The L.A. Times website has a little photo slide show feature called: "Are you...
Posted January 26, 2009 11:23 AM
Los Angeles is going to be lousy with its absentee news moguls this month. Dean Singleton is coming in for a meeting of his suits on the 23rd — no...
Posted January 14, 2009 1:34 AM
Readers of Los Angeles Metblogs have spoken. They voted Sam Zell as the 2008 Grinch of the Year. Quips the blog's David Markland: "Congratulations, Sam! Ebenezer Scrooge and William Mulholland...
Posted January 8, 2009 6:12 PM
Mark Lacter points in his LA Biz Observed morning headlines to a column where Washington Post writer Steven Pearlstein calls B.S. on Sam Zell's claim that a "perfect storm" of...
Posted December 10, 2008 8:53 AM
News item: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested on suspicion of corruption, believed that Sam Zell planned to use "certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts" to get the Chicago Tribune editorial...
Posted December 9, 2008 10:39 AM
From Tribune's internal Q-&-A on the impacts of today's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing: How are severance payments affected? All ongoing severance payments, deferred compensation and other payments to former employees...
Posted December 8, 2008 12:46 PM
Mark Lacter has this morning's news at LA Biz Observed on Tribune filing for Chapter 11 protection. Here's chairman and CEO Sam Zell's statement to the staffs at the LA...
Posted December 8, 2008 11:36 AM
The New York Times has posted a new staff story on the reports about Tribune's internal preparations to possibly file for bankruptcy protection. The nub: Tribune is in danger of...
Posted December 7, 2008 6:50 PM
Mark Lacter has been following the afternoon's developments on Sam Zell preparing to seek bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, if he can't renegotiate the loans that allowed him...
Posted December 7, 2008 5:34 PM
The previous editor of the Los Angeles Times wonders at the Nieman Watchdog whether newspapers will deliver "the rich, hard-hitting storytelling that gives the news its infrastructure of shoe-leather journalism...
Posted December 1, 2008 12:56 PM
Veteran media executive Charles Warner, the former head of interactive marketing at AOL and an emeritus chair at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, blogs at the Huffington Post...
Posted November 30, 2008 11:10 AM
From around the local media: Sam Rubin talked to SAG president Alan Rosenberg on the KTLA Morning News. "We've made monumental moves in their direction...and they have not moved one...
Posted November 24, 2008 3:08 PM
Several of the biggest corporate buyouts in recent years are in trouble, says Breakingviews.com, especially Sam Zell's highly leveraged take over of Tribune. Tribune looks to be the megadeal most...
Posted November 24, 2008 12:49 PM
Chief Tribune innovation honcho, Lee Abrams, was in town this week for a Press Club event and, in addition to this YouTube video, left a flurry of news stories...
Posted November 15, 2008 12:17 PM
There's a cottage industry of black humor and killer irony at the Times thanks to Lee Abrams' smug memos, with their hefty helpings of hubris tinged with Tourettes. Here's one...
Posted November 14, 2008 12:07 PM
Tribune has decided to stop outsourcing its computer help desk overseas. Because as anyone at the L.A. Times or KTLA could tell them, it w-a-s-n't w-o-r-k-i-n-g. From: Tribune Communications Subject:...
Posted November 7, 2008 10:31 AM
Sam Zell's contributions in this election cycle include $20,000 to the McCain Victory Committee on May 6 and another $20,000 to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 on Sept. 16. Previously, all we...
Posted October 31, 2008 5:09 PM
The Financial Times is reporting that Sam Zell's Tribune has been kicking the tires on the Orange County Register with an eye to "consolidate the Los Angeles newspaper market, as...
Posted October 22, 2008 3:50 PM
Radio guy turned Tribune innovation guru Lee Abrams is talking a lot these days. Today, Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici caught up to him at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media & Money conference...
Posted October 15, 2008 9:30 AM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa upped the ante today in the traditional jousting between mayors of baseball playoff cities. Chicago mayor Richard Mayor Daley previously wagered a “Take Me Out to the...
Posted October 1, 2008 4:05 PM
Sam Zell had another of his big birthday bashes over the weekend in Chicago. A blogger connected to a relative posted a report and pics at the Philadelphia City Paper...
Posted September 30, 2008 4:02 PM
The editor and managing editor introduce the new look newspaper on Chicago television — watch the video....
Posted September 23, 2008 10:34 PM
I guess Jim Newton really didn't want to leave the Los Angeles Times to write his book about Dwight Eisenhower — and that Publisher David Hiller was the main reason...
Posted September 19, 2008 12:12 PM
Sam Zell responded to yesterday's class-action lawsuit by Los Angeles Times employees — which was first reported here — in a Dear Partners note to the company. He calls the...
Posted September 17, 2008 2:55 PM
A few minutes ago I added the names of the Los Angeles Times columnist and former reporters who sued Sam Zell in federal court today, alleging he messed with the...
Posted September 16, 2008 12:44 PM
I'm told that lawyers representing current and former Los Angeles Times newsroom staffers are filing a class-action federal lawsuit against Sam Zell and Tribune this morning in Los Angeles, alleging...
Posted September 16, 2008 10:12 AM
I enjoyed reading the story of Tom Dreesen and Tim Reid, who met at a Jaycees meeting outside Chicago in 1968 and struggled to break through as a black-and-white comedy...
Posted September 9, 2008 10:41 PM
Allan Sloan of Fortune Magazine, a persistent skeptic of Tribune dealings, breaks down Sam Zell's latest creative financing scheme for Marketplace: "The company is in, as you know, big trouble....What...
Posted August 11, 2008 10:45 PM
Just before noon, the editors at LATimes.com decided to give one of the top spots at the Los Angeles Times home page to a story — and tag cloud —...
Posted July 31, 2008 1:10 PM
Sam Zell tells Business Week that "it will continue to be the deal from hell until we turn it around." More from the piece now in the magazine, which calls...
Posted July 30, 2008 3:12 PM
Joe Scott blogs that Sam Zell should sell the Los Angeles Times. What amazes is the current lack of outrage about the decline and fall of LA’s most important asset....I...
Posted July 30, 2008 12:15 AM
I'm hearing that at last night's L. A. Times farewell soiree, the elephant in the room, so to speak, was Eli Broad. The billionaire art patron was a very active...
Posted July 23, 2008 3:21 PM
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and ex-mayor Richard Riordan attended tonight's reception in the L.A. Times building for departing editor of the editorial pages Jim Newton. He quit June 3,...
Posted July 22, 2008 11:51 PM
Maurice Possley, a Chicago Tribune criminal justice reporter who was on the team that helped free wrongly convicted death row prisoners, asked to be included in his paper's involuntary separation...
Posted July 21, 2008 12:52 PM
I'm woefully behind on emails and hope to catch up while traveling this weekend. Meanwhile, here's the link to Friday's LA Observed segment on KCRW. The script is posted below,...
Posted July 19, 2008 12:35 AM
Ann Marie Lipinski doesn't mention Sam Zell by name. But, well... She is the second highest ranking newspaper editor in Zell's empire. Lipinski's note to the newsroom does mention the...
Posted July 14, 2008 9:51 AM
That's how one staffer describes the mood around the Los Angeles Times offices, where editors were believed to be working last night on their final lists of staffers — 150...
Posted July 11, 2008 12:50 AM
The reason Sam Zell and company get so much attention (and let's face it, derision) here is not that they want to force change on institutions like the Times and...
Posted July 10, 2008 2:15 PM
With Sam Zell and Randy Michaels in town and making everybody antsy, and speculation raging in the newsroom about the future of Publisher David Hiller, the cutting out of printed...
Posted July 9, 2008 5:10 PM
Sam Zell's in-house innovator Lee Abrams has memoed again, long and rambling and ungrammatical as usual. Now that the cost-cutting Los Angeles Times is apparently moving towards folding the stand-alone...
Posted July 8, 2008 9:15 AM
ERS News says that seven Channel 5 news staffers got the pink slip today, including on-air reporters Walter Richards, Bill Smith, Willa Sandmeyer and Janet Choi. Two long-time executive producers...
Posted June 30, 2008 8:55 PM
Word at the Los Angeles Times is that retired reporter Ken Reich, 70, died in his sleep. He was found this morning. Friend and former Tom Bradley deputy mayor Anton...
Posted June 30, 2008 11:43 AM
That's what retired Los Angeles Times reporter Ken Reich calls his series of blog posts telling a little bit about 75 former Times staffers who left during the later part...
Posted June 29, 2008 11:53 PM
I'd much rather not be posting all the time about a Chicago billionaire, but Sam Zell is L.A.'s biggest news media mogul right now. Yesterday at a taping for Dave...
Posted June 25, 2008 10:28 AM
Tribune's Lee Abrams, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, sought to clarify some of his image as...a not very informed observer of newspapers, even though he's the...
Posted June 24, 2008 9:55 PM
Radio talker Hugh Hewitt offers some new advice to Sam Zell and Randy Michaels on the problem child of their big debt-laden, default-threatened investment in the Tribune company. (Here was...
Posted June 24, 2008 9:34 PM
At the Los Angeles Press Club awards on Saturday night, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez had some fun at Sam Zell's expense — alluding to Zell's lame ideas, four-letter...
Posted June 24, 2008 7:10 PM
This time the Tribune innovation guru explains why the Orlando redesign will work. Again, nothing about higher quality or better, deeper, smarter stories. It's all about the presentation and marketing....
Posted June 23, 2008 10:52 AM
Sam Zell's Orland Sentinel has unveiled its new more colorful and "get to the point" redesign. The editor of the Chicago Tribune today told her staff that the paper will...
Posted June 20, 2008 9:17 AM
The anonymous L.A. Times staffer (plural?) behind Tell Zell has posted a list of the LAT journalists who have left the newsroom in the past two years and a link...
Posted June 16, 2008 11:54 AM
Never a dull moment.... Chicago Tribune publisher Scott Smith says he'll retire, calling it time for Zell and Randy Michaels to bring in their own morning deejay "new leadership." Romenesko...
Posted June 12, 2008 2:05 PM
Marjorie Miller says it's her call to return to reporting and that the new management team at the L.A. Times should get to name its own foreign editor. Memos here...
Posted June 5, 2008 3:38 PM
Joel Sappell had been at the L.A. Times for 26 years, most recently as an investigative projects editor. He never considered any previous buyout, thinking of the LAT as his...
Posted June 2, 2008 2:20 PM
New week, new pearls of official innovation-ness from Tribune's chief research scientist. The graduate of the FM radio school of higher thinking sent out 1,238 words this time. Before I...
Posted May 27, 2008 2:38 PM
I'm told that staffers at Channel 5 were gathered together for two all-hands meetings yesterday and told that ND Rich Goldner would exit today for that new job in San...
Posted May 20, 2008 12:15 PM
My favorite part of Lee Abrams' latest pearls of wordiness emailed to Tribune's weary innovators is this, from Romenesko: Using my favorite music analogies--Imagine Newspaper CONTENT is a major artist....
Posted May 19, 2008 10:35 PM
Proposition 98 is sold to voters as an anti-eminent domain measure, "but really carries the long-standing agenda of interests that want to extinguish rent control and block water and air...
Posted May 12, 2008 8:19 AM
Perhaps Sam Zell realized his troubled new company needs a full-time boss, or maybe he just tired of his newspaper toys after a few months in charge. Whatever, executive VP...
Posted May 7, 2008 11:28 PM
Tribune innovation czar Lee Abrams blogs that before coming to Los Angeles, "For years I have heard the Industry dirt on the Los Angeles Times. Got a lot of 'good...
Posted May 5, 2008 4:55 PM
Sam Zell's new innovation guru, Lee Abrams, uses a video on the company site to explain his vision of how the 1950s growth of rock and roll and reinvention of...
Posted April 24, 2008 2:56 PM
As of January 1, the Tribune began charging employees who smoke $100 a month more for their health care. Today the new Tribune did away with the fee and plans...
Posted April 22, 2008 3:15 PM
Mark Lacter listened in on Sam Zell's conference call today with analysts and didn't hear much that was new. Zell says employees keep telling him he's a breath of fresh...
Posted April 17, 2008 12:25 PM
San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob writes today that "I was sued by the owner of the Los Angeles Times for speaking my mind about the business practices of one...
Posted April 16, 2008 12:37 PM
Now that's he actually on the job, Lee Abrams is pleasantly surprised to found there are lots of people in his company who actually know stuff and are open-minded about...
Posted April 15, 2008 10:57 AM
RJ Smith at Los Angeles magazine conducted interviews with all six living ex-editors of the Los Angeles Times, a group whose time in charge spans from 1971 to this year....
Posted April 15, 2008 7:40 AM
Just passing along what I was told this morning from a possibly good source — no confirmation, no independent reporting, no warranty implied. But my contact travels in the right...
Posted April 11, 2008 9:06 AM
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik got hold of an audio tape of Sam Zell's morale-sapping remarks at the L.A. Times and Tribune Washington bureau in February. That's the visit where...
Posted April 9, 2008 8:46 AM
OK, we get it. Sam Zell keeps saying the people who work at Tribune, its TV stations and newspapers take themselves too seriously. This new press release on the Tribune...
Posted April 7, 2008 5:20 PM
Four more Clear Channel executives jumped to Tribune last week, and together with the radio and TV veterans that had already joined the Sam Zell team it suggests to the...
Posted April 6, 2008 9:35 PM
Tribune's new innovation honcho Lee Abrams finally began work today after a career in radio and a bunch of pre-memos. He immediately blogged his notes on a vision for the...
Posted April 2, 2008 11:39 AM
Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein's voice carries a lot of weight in the newsroom and his departure may be the one affecting staff morale the most. (Here's his Friday...
Posted March 30, 2008 12:56 AM
Many of the journalists who departed the L.A. Times on Friday sent farewells to the newsroom. Some directed messages at Tribune owner Sam Zell. Here's the email from special projects...
Posted March 30, 2008 12:43 AM
Friday was clean out their desk day for the editors, writers and other staffers who left the Los Angeles Times in the lastest wave of buyouts. (I'll update my list...
Posted March 29, 2008 11:37 AM
Reporter Myron Levin, one of the veteran reporters to take the Los Angeles Times buyout, checked out today with a farewell email to the entire editorial staff. He seems to...
Posted March 27, 2008 5:12 PM
Sam Zell wants his "partners" in the Tribune empire to send their ideas to a new online Idea Bank -- and to make withdrawals too. The latest from Uncle Sam:...
Posted March 26, 2008 12:39 PM
CEO Sam Zell enjoyed the little dig his Chicago Tribune got in on the rival Sun-Times, which held a contest to let readers' express their opinion on Zell's possible interest...
Posted March 24, 2008 4:31 PM
Tribune CEO Sam Zell just sent all the "partners" — his title for the employees who put up the money for him to buy the company — a note acknowledging...
Posted March 20, 2008 1:58 PM
Sam Zell's new company endured a $78 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared to a a profit of $233 million in the same quarter a year earlier....
Posted March 20, 2008 12:06 PM
Note to KTLA: the TV station that Sam Zell's Tribune company owns in South Florida is moving in with the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Zell has said the company would...
Posted March 19, 2008 9:12 AM
In his first visit to the Wall Street Journal’s D.C. bureau, new owner Rupert Murdoch told staffers that he would put more resources into Washington coverage and take on the...
Posted March 11, 2008 9:05 AM
How often can the people who actually have to run the L.A. Times cover for Sam Zell's...Zelliousnness? This time, Publisher David Hiller sent the Washington bureau a valentine assuring the...
Posted February 28, 2008 3:46 PM
The eminent domain measure on the June ballot would also phase out some rent control laws, potentially resulting in a $15 million windfall for Sam Zell's Equity Lifestyle Properties Inc.,...
Posted February 28, 2008 12:40 AM
Michael Tackett, who runs the Chicago Tribune's side of the big bureau in Washington that the LAT dominates, tells Editor & Publisher that his people are ready to work with...
Posted February 27, 2008 11:47 AM
Chicago Tribune media columnist Phil Rosenthal covers yesterday's Sam Zell attack on the LAT Washington bureau, and it goes beyond the psychic bloodbath I picked up. Zell wants the Times...
Posted February 27, 2008 8:59 AM
I'm told Sam Zell just informed the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau that there's way too many people there and they should start acting like a wire service for the...
Posted February 26, 2008 11:21 AM
Inspired by Zell's comments last night at the Hammer, my LA Observed segment on KCRW at 4:44 pm wonders why anyone sees him as a potential saviour of journalism here...
Posted February 22, 2008 4:39 PM
I listened to Sam Zell answer questions Thursday night at the Hammer Museum, then afterward shook his hand and chatted a bit about the Times and newspapers. First time I'd...
Posted February 21, 2008 10:06 PM
Alert YouTube. Sam Zell makes his first public appearance in Los Angeles Thursday since all that foofah over his demeaning language — and the launch of a new era at...
Posted February 20, 2008 6:25 PM
Vinnie Malcolm will be leaving the building at Channel 5. He may already be gone. Staffers aren't clear just how hard he was pushed, but the memo from new Sam...
Posted February 19, 2008 12:26 PM
Portfolio's Jack Flack tries to answer a provocative question: who is the smarter newspaper owner, Sam Zell or Rupert Murdoch. It might be an unfair question, since Murdoch has run...
Posted February 14, 2008 4:50 PM
While I was on the road, Mark Lacter picked up the news that Sam Zell ordered staff cuts at the Times and across Tribune, citing the need to reduce costs...
Posted February 13, 2008 11:18 PM
Bad timing. As soon as I finished and posted the previous item on some LAT concerns about the reaction to Sam Zell's style, I received an email that went out...
Posted February 11, 2008 6:38 PM
So you get the choice assignment: illustrate a story on the science of orgasm. Problem: How do you depict something you can't see? Caveat: It's for a big family newspaper,...
Posted February 11, 2008 6:18 PM
Sam Zell apparently got enough feedback about his boorish (at best) remarks at the Times and Orlando Sentinel last week that he sent out a mea culpa this morning posing...
Posted February 11, 2008 11:41 AM
The pressmen at the Times' printing plant asked Sam Zell during last week's visit why the bosses wouldn't let them have a pool table to blow off steam during breaks....
Posted February 11, 2008 12:51 AM
As of now, Sam Zell has his own category at LA Observed. Signs are it will be a busy one. I get now what New York journos see in the...
Posted February 8, 2008 9:45 AM
Times pressman Ed Padgett blogs that Sam Zell was a big hit at the paper's downtown printing plant this morning. The new boss also brought some news, according to Padgett....
Posted February 7, 2008 6:22 PM
New owner Sam Zell apparently lit into ex-editor Jim O'Shea during this morning's talk to L.A. Times employees. If I get better reports, or the transcript — or video? —...
Posted February 7, 2008 11:21 AM
Sam Zell is turning out to be prickly about having his wisdom about journalism challenged, even slightly. He got all huffy about a question in one of his visits to...
Posted February 4, 2008 11:58 AM
As several KTLA staffers have emailed to remind me, the station had been blocking employees' access to LA Observed. Even while cooperating from time to time at the news level....
Posted January 22, 2008 1:23 PM
Tribune chairman Sam Zell decrees that his properties will no longer filter the Internet content that employees can view. Via email to staffers: From: Talk to Sam Sent: Tuesday, January...
Posted January 22, 2008 11:42 AM
New Tribune chairman Sam Zell emailed the Times staff: From: Talk to Sam Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 10:04 AM Subject: Jim O'Shea's departure Everyone, With all of the media...
Posted January 21, 2008 11:29 AM
A new employee handbook from the Zell regime went out to all 20,000 Tribune "owners" today. It tries to distance the new Zellian Tribune from the old group, and begins...
Posted January 16, 2008 11:51 PM
The New Yorker's Connie Bruck examines the personality that is Sam Zell and his deal to acquire Tribune, and comes up with some earthy quotes and notable observations. Zell on...
Posted November 5, 2007 9:15 AM
Sam Zell was in Beverly Hills today and more or less swore that he has no plans to sell the Los Angeles Times, assuming that he gets hold of Tribune,...
Posted October 9, 2007 9:32 PM
Sam Zell doesn't yet have control of the Tribune Company — and tried to reassure a skeptical stock market today that he will — but he's billed as the special...
Posted August 14, 2007 3:24 PM
Strong words from financial analyst Jim Cramer at The Street.com about the pending Tribune Company sale. Make that red flags and warning sirens: You have to feel terrible about what's...
Posted July 17, 2007 7:59 PM
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| AEG Live, promoter of the Michael Jackson shows in London, stands to recoup a big chunk of its investment, thanks to insurance and two golden opportunities.
| Banks were far more accommodating in 1992, the last time warrants had to be issued, and that laissez-faire stance might have delayed cutting a deal.
| News of Michael Jackson's death -- along with about a dozen satellite trucks -- prompted a gathering outside UCLA Medical Center on Thursday.
The "Right of Way" rewrite is underway. Collaborator Marvin Wolf has already refined the project down to two documents, including a 25-page treatment, while finding time to knock out a novel or two on the side.
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