Zell may sell assets

Tribune Co.'s head honcho told Baltimore Sun staffers that a steeper-than-expected revenue decline could cause him to reassess his initial intention to hold onto all the company's newspaper properties. "The news business is something worse than horrible," Zell said. "If that's the future, we don't have much of a future." His initial strategy had been based on a revenue decline of 2 percent to 3 percent year over year - not the 16 percent to 18 percent tumble that the Tribune newspapers are facing. "If that trend continues, we may have to re-evaluate a lot of our decisions," Zell said. The revenue dropoff is a huge deal because Tribune is relying on cash flow to help finance last year’s Zell-led deal to go private. If you can't pay off the interest on that debt through cash flow, there aren't many other options, besides selling off assets. The Sun story includes a two-minute clip in which Zell sounds more downbeat than he was at earlier appearances in L.A. and elsewhere.