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You are here: Home / Decline and fall

Decline and fall

by DougJ|  October 6, 20106:02 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment, Pink Himalayan Salt, We Are All Mayans Now

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This article about the fall of Chicago Tribune Company has a real last-days-of-Rome feeling to it:

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

[….]

Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

Not surprisingly, the Tribune has not done well financially:

Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed.

But better times are ahead!

And management still is confident that the new thinking has Tribune on the right track. The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

I probably shouldn’t laugh since the 4200 people who lost their jobs certainly deserve better. It’s hard not see this as a metaphor for contemporary America: a bunch of spoiled frat fucks running a once great country into the ground, all the while being celebrated as Galtian supermen.

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51Comments

  1. 1.

    El Tiburon

    October 6, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    Face it: Newspapers are dead. Time to wrap the corpses up in some, well, in some newspaper and bury it in the backyard.

    I predict within a very short time period, iPad type devices will be so cheap and popular that smart coffee shops, etc. will provide them on racks a la newspapers and magazines for people to peruse if they don’t have their own.

    But, like the resurgence of vinyl, I still love to read and hold actual magazines (and books) and think they will be around for a long time.

    But newspapers have lost their advantage of providing breaking news. They can’t die fast enough.

  2. 2.

    beltane

    October 6, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    There is something wrong with the way upper and upper-middle class parents raise (or used to raise, I doubt it’s better now) their kids in this country. I can’t think of any other explanation for the pervasiveness of this type of behavior among our ruling class. Maybe David Brooks can explain this to us.

  3. 3.

    Bob Loblaw

    October 6, 2010 at 6:10 pm

    When exactly were we this “great” country? During our apartheid years?

    The eighties? The nineties?

    We’re pretty much what we always were. The rest of the world is just catching up. Declinists are silly.

  4. 4.

    beltane

    October 6, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    @El Tiburon: Speaking of vinyl. London Calling is being reissued as an LP for $24. Getting rid of my vinyl collection is one of my many regrets in life.

  5. 5.

    DonkeyKong

    October 6, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    Call it Free Market Cannibalism.

  6. 6.

    Maude

    October 6, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    @beltane:
    Prolly Tom Friedman will have sage words for us on this.

  7. 7.

    Martin

    October 6, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    @beltane: I think it’s called ‘American Exceptionalism’.

  8. 8.

    scav

    October 6, 2010 at 6:14 pm

    I particularly love this one

    “The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance,” the announcement read. And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

    The flag triumphantly hoisted for still more of the same defiant ignorance, planted in full view of the entirely incorrect enemy (TV ? !), by a paper that I’m rather astonished managed to find found ways to sink lower from a traditionally low basecamp. Excelsior!

  9. 9.

    Comrade Luke

    October 6, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    Newspapers are dead. They were propped up solely due to advertising sales, just like TV.

    Wait…

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    October 6, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    a bunch of spoiled frat fucks

    In what fucked up world is a little brotherhood a bad thing?

  11. 11.

    Short Bus Bully

    October 6, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    @Bob Loblaw:

    No shit. This is a key point. It’s a feature, not a bug.

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 6, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    I mean, after we tolerated the installation of a fratboy who deserted from the Air National Guard into the White House, now we’re questioning letting these immature assholes anywhere near the levers of power?

    Read farther on in that article, and you’ll see how these twits changed the Tribune Employee manual so that being a crude cad was considered to be normal.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 6, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    I mean, after we tolerated the installation of a fratboy who deserted from the Air National Guard into the White House, now we’re questioning letting these immature assholes anywhere near the levers of power?

    Read farther on in that article, and you’ll see how these twits changed the Tribune Employee manual so that being a crude cad was considered to be normal.

  14. 14.

    CalD

    October 6, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    It’s hard not see this as a metaphor for contemporary America: a bunch of spoiled frat fucks running a once great country into the ground, all the while being celebrated as Galtian supermen.

    Couldn’t’ve said it better.

  15. 15.

    singfoom

    October 6, 2010 at 6:19 pm

    I worked at the Tribune from Fall 2007 – December 08….
    I was there during the Zell takeover and the Clear Channel executive horde invasion.

    The article is exactly right. These guys were shock jocks, idiots and fools all around. They did stupid shit like bringing in 1Million dollars with armed guards and letting you sit on the pile of money. It was the funding they would give to an employee to fund a program the employee came up with if they liked the business plan. They couldn’t come up with their own business plans, so they had to ask all the normal employees. I don’t think anything ever came of it, despite many employee’s good ideas…

    Bankrupt leadership…..I always thought that Zell just wanted the Tower so he could turn it into condos anyway……

  16. 16.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    October 6, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    When I was a little girl, I delivered that paper.

    When I grew up and became a writer, nothing, nothing, made me prouder than the various times that my commentary ran on its pages. Not even the time or two that I was in the Christian Science Monitor, because dude: I delivered that paper when I was a little girl.

    It breaks my heart what that man has done to the Tribune — which is still, in many ways and in spite of Sam Zell, an excellent publication.

    And it’s not just the 4,200 employees that lost their jobs — terrible enough — but it’s all the people who are now working two jobs for the pay of one, all the people who can’t do what they know how to do (real journalism) because they’re not allowed to do painstakingly slow work, and it’s all the sad little freelancers like me, who can’t sell their work anymore, because a paper with no money and very few pages doesn’t have budget or space for outside voices.

    It breaks my heart, and really makes me mad.

  17. 17.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    October 6, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    @DonkeyKong: Bingo.

  18. 18.

    jayboat

    October 6, 2010 at 6:23 pm

    I operated a small ad agency back in late 70’s/early 80’s and one of the things that struck me was how sleazy the radio people were compared to tv and print. By a mile- not even close. Nothing I have ever read about ClearChannel has moved my opinion one inch.

    Not stereotyping, just one man’s observation.

    All these rat bastards can rot in hell- listening to christian ‘rock’ at full volume on an endless loop.

  19. 19.

    Zifnab

    October 6, 2010 at 6:25 pm

    @Bob Loblaw: I’ve always been a little confused at the “American Exceptionalism!” kick, too. I mean, I understand how everyone likes to joke that their country is the best. But from a historical perspective, America stood in the shadow during the First World War and remained nearly untouched during the Second. No shit we spent the next sixty years running ahead of the pack. Congratulations on us for not getting bombed the fuck out of.

    But unless Europe, China, or Russia decide to pick another international fight – and America once again manages to remain completely exempt from the conflict – we’ve blown our lead. Now we’re just another empire. And a particularly badly run one at that.

  20. 20.

    El Cid

    October 6, 2010 at 6:26 pm

    Strangely enough, the new David Cross series on IFC “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret” features Will Arnett as an idiot loudmouth CEO showing about as much tact as the chosen Tribune prick when hiring a head of office — David Cross.

    Arnett to the existing local director: “I don’t really know what you do here, nor do I give a shit.”

    I’m thinking Will Arnett is Zell and David Cross is DJ Dick.

  21. 21.

    El Cid

    October 6, 2010 at 6:29 pm

    They should pick a real leader like Sarah Palin to turn that place around.

  22. 22.

    slag

    October 6, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    It’s hard not see this as a metaphor for contemporary America: a bunch of spoiled frat fucks running a once great country into the ground, all the while being celebrated as Galtian supermen.

    Wealthy white boys are perfectly allowed to behave like total assholes in this country and not incur any kind of stigma. I think it’s written into the Constitution somewhere. Just ask Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh–they’ll be able to find it for you.

  23. 23.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 6, 2010 at 6:38 pm

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:

    It breaks my heart what that man has done to the Tribune—which is still, in many ways and in spite of Sam Zell, an excellent publication.

    Not that I’m excusing Zell or anything, but Tribune Co. was being well and truly fucked well before Zell got his hands on it.

  24. 24.

    mapaghimagsik

    October 6, 2010 at 6:46 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    When it takes the place of merit.

  25. 25.

    Menzies

    October 6, 2010 at 6:52 pm

    @mapaghimagsik:

    Thank you. The problem with Zell and his bunch isn’t just that they’re frat boys. It’s that they’re frat boys with no real redeeming qualities.

  26. 26.

    Ailuridae

    October 6, 2010 at 6:54 pm

    If you want to get to the real sleaze of the Tribune you could also look at them keeping the Cubs out of the initial bankruptcy and then filing a convenience bankruptcy to fuck their creditors and finish the sale to Ricketts.

  27. 27.

    mapaghimagsik

    October 6, 2010 at 6:59 pm

    @Menzies:

    You’re right there. Frats can have value, but so many weak minded people use them to have an “us” to avoid being a “them”

    I find that with military where I work, too. There’s good people from the military that work with us — hardworking, smart, sharp, effective. Then there’s the hangers on, but there’s this “bros before hos” mentality that keeps the fraternity welfare flowing.

  28. 28.

    Menzies

    October 6, 2010 at 7:09 pm

    @Ailuridae:

    Absolutely. Similarly Zell’s little manoeuvre to keep his money even as he screws his company and all of his employee-shareholders – clearly this was permitted even after Enron did essentially the same thing on a larger level.

    @mapaghimagsik:

    Yeah, that’s pretty much what’s up. I don’t have an a priori problem with fraternities – at least not with all of them – but I’m not a pledge type and never will be.

  29. 29.

    Bokonon

    October 6, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    I recently went to a management training session. An inspirational speaker was brought in to talk to us. He proceded to relate importance of his personal faith in Jesus, and urged us to follow maxims like, “If it ain’t broke, then BREAK IT.”

    I looked around the room, and everyone else seemed to be smiling and nodding.

    It was all irrational. It was all pointedly faith-based and irrational, and about reacting and blowing things up rather than thinking things through.

    I felt like throwing my pen down and walking out of the room. But that probably would have marked me as a negative thinker, and someone who isn’t a team player.

  30. 30.

    Stannate

    October 6, 2010 at 7:17 pm

    My grandfather worked in the newspaper industry for almost 50 years, with the vast majority of his time at the Chicago Daily News. He transferred over to the Sun-Times in 1978 when the afternoon Daily News folded, rising to head the circulation department during the last days of Marshall Field’s ownership. When Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times and turned it into a screaming headline version of the New York Post (though with slightly less lurid headlines; “Hoosier To Get ‘Barney Clark’ Heart” was as obnoxious as the S-T got in the 80s), Maurice was one of the few old-guard guys who carried over to the new regime. After he trained his replacement and was subsequently let go, he found work at David Neiwert’s favorite newspaper, the Spokesman-Review of Spokane. Ironically, Maurice also got to end the existence of another afternoon newspaper, the Spokane Chronicle, during his time out west.

    After Maurice retired for good in 1996, he and my grandmother moved back to Chicago. From 1996 until his death three years ago, the Sun-Times never crossed over his threshold as he preferred the Tribune. He based his justification not only because of personal feelings, but also because he thought that Conrad Black (who owned the S-T throughout most of Maurice’s remaining time in Chicago) was a cheaper version of Murdoch. Had he managed to live to this day, my gut tells me that he would have reverted back to the Sun-Times and given the Tribune the boot.

    (Yes, if you look up my grandfather’s name, you’ll come across his uncle and namesake, Moss Twomey, who himself has quite the history in Ireland. Perhaps it’s fitting that after Moss left the old IRA, he ran a newspaper stand on O’Connell Street in Dublin.)

  31. 31.

    Caren

    October 6, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    When I first moved to Chicago in the 80s, the Sun-Times was a Rupert rag and the Tribune was the serious paper with all the best columnists–including Mike Royko.

    The Sun-Times was sold…and slowly redeemed itself. The Tribune has been in steady decline. I have avoided the Trib for years…something made slightly more difficult lately as one of the bright ideas was to change the Trib’s layout to ‘tabloid’ format so that it looks exactly like the Sun-Times. I *hate* grabbing the wrong paper.

    But, shit, discovering they rewrote the employee handbook defining harrassment as NOT harrassment? What a bunch of complete losers.

    That includes current and former employees, who are too scared of being attached to an EEOC complaint to complain.

  32. 32.

    El Tiburon

    October 6, 2010 at 7:38 pm

    @beltane:

    Getting rid of my vinyl collection is one of my many regrets in life.

    That and my epic collection of probably-not-so pristine Mad magazines. Newman!

  33. 33.

    burnspbesq

    October 6, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    @singfoom:

    All Sam Zell has ever cared about, in any deal, is the real estate. Be thankful he didn’t burn down Wrigley Field to make room for a gated community of McMansions like the one my brother lives in out in Long Grove.

  34. 34.

    Emma

    October 6, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    Am I the only one who has given up on newspapers other than say, Financial Times, Le Monde, and the McClatchy feed? They are a waste of time and space and except for a few bright spots like the Krugman column, not worth my spending valuable brain cells on them.

    I remember the days when the Trib was a decent, conservative newspaper. Dammit.

  35. 35.

    Suffern ACE

    October 6, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    @Bokonon: You must be pretty high up in your company since only high management types are allowed to be rewarded for practicing the fine art of breaking things that work. Pretty much anyone else who does that ends up being fired, transferred, or working for a consulting firm.

  36. 36.

    burnspbesq

    October 6, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Don’t get me started about Zell’s desecration of the Los Angeles Times.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    October 6, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    @burnspbesq:
    As an Angelino (actually a Pasadenan, but nobody reads the Star-News), I share your pain. The thing that’s really disgusting is that they gutted the Times even though it was profitable; they just wanted to squeeze even more money out of it. They didn’t care that doing so gutted it and ruined their chances of future profits. America’s CEOs can’t see past the ends of their noses.

  38. 38.

    Silver Owl

    October 6, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    What another arrogant rich person that is really bad at business and has crappy standards? No way. lol

  39. 39.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 6, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    @burnspbesq:
    You might want to watch “News War,” the PBS Frontline docu that detailed the decline of the LAT in part three in 2007, well before Zell took over.

    Again, Zell did some crappy things, but he was there for a year. The Trib. Co. was drowning before that.

  40. 40.

    frosty

    October 6, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    They buggered up the Baltimore Sun, which used to be a real newspaper with foreign bureaus, good local coverage, and reasonable Washington coverage. The last year I subscribed, well over half the articles were from the Chicago Tribune or LA Times. The local staff had been slashed.

    Oh, and the conservative slant everywhere just set my teeth on edge.

  41. 41.

    Anne Laurie

    October 6, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    @Zifnab:
    __

    I’ve always been a little confused at the “American Exceptionalism!” kick…

    Think of the “American Exceptionalist” as Holden Caulfield — an overprivileged adolescent convinced that the rest of the world is nothing but “phonies” determined to corrupt his purity of essence.

    How’d it work out for that Caulfield kid, anyways?

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    October 6, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    @Stannate:

    (though with slightly less lurid headlines; “Hoosier To Get ‘Barney Clark’ Heart” was as obnoxious as the S-T got in the 80s)

    We had some relatives die in a car crash in the 80s — husband, wife, and three kids — and the fucking Sun-Times ran their fucking family picture as the front page of the paper. Because apparently it was so totally awesome that an entire family died in one car crash that it had to take up the whole front page.

    Fuck the Sun-Times. I still haven’t forgiven them for that.

  43. 43.

    International Mikey

    October 6, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    As a newspaper fan/freak, native Chicagoan and a Californian for several years, I’m outraged by what Zell has done to both the Trib and the LA Times. While never a fan of the Trib’s editorial positions, it was still a classy newspaper and it produced some marvelous journalism over the years. The LA Times was the NY Times of the West – every bit as comprehensive and deep. He (Zell) has turned both papers into garbage. I had a chance to read the Omaha World Herald this week and it is now a better paper than either of Zell’s rags – and it used to be known in my world as the “Weird Harold”. Zell’s an ass. Just because you have money does not mean you have brains or class (as $arah Palin is now proving on an almost daily basis). Its sickening and the article in the NYT today made my heart sink further….

  44. 44.

    Nellcote

    October 6, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports.

    Well, it worked for Clear Channel. Oh wait, no it didn’t.

  45. 45.

    E.D. Kain

    October 6, 2010 at 10:14 pm

    Wow. Neat place to work.

  46. 46.

    redoubt

    October 6, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Thank you for delivering it and writing for it when it was still some good.

    I was in Chicago a month ago; picked up the Sunday Trib, hadn’t been there since they changed to tabloid . . . Wow. What did I do that for. There was nothing in it. The Sunday Magazine? (I used to look forward to that) Gone. No local news at all; recycled wire copy. (Three gossip columns though. I thought Kup was dead?) It was smaller than the AJC I get every Sunday.

    I used to keep copies of the Trib to remind myself of what a real paper looked like. No more. That one got left in Chicago.

  47. 47.

    NonyNony

    October 6, 2010 at 10:41 pm

    The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

    Because that’s exactly how you differentiate your product from everyone else – making it so generic you can’t tell whether you’re watching WGN or the Weather Channel unless you look for the bug in the corner.

    Jesus. It’s like they’ve failed basic marketing. Or they just don’t care and are trying to do it as cheaply as possible. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they know they’re running their company into the ground and they don’t care.

  48. 48.

    M. Bouffant

    October 6, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    @jayboat:
    how sleazy the radio people were compared to tv and print. By a mile- not even close
    No, it is a completely correct stereotype. Probably all the payola in the air.

  49. 49.

    grumpy realist

    October 7, 2010 at 11:54 am

    I think what we’ve seen in Chicago is the splintering of the news. There’s still sufficient specialized media around (Crain’s Business, Chicago Law) that the “serious” stuff is still available for those who want to pay the pricey subscriptions.

    But the Trib has just gotten lousier and lousier, with bigger and bigger ads, and less and less actual content.

    Yah, and two thumbs up for the FT as well. Was introduced to it back in the 90s over in Tokyo and decided it’s the best all-around way to get a global newsfeed.

  50. 50.

    Lex

    October 7, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    A couple of thoughts from a former musician, disc jockey and journalist (with no connection to Tribune Co.):

    — Sam Zell is perfectly happy to have people buzzing about boobies ‘n’ cigars ‘n’ profanity, because as long as they’re buzzing about boobies ‘n’ cigars ‘n’ profanity, they’re not buzzing about fraud and conspiracy and multiple violations of the RICO Act and breaches of fiduciary responsibility, which are the real issues here.

    — Next time some teatard tells you government should be run more like business, ask him if Tribune Co. is the business he has in mind.

    — The rule of law. I really miss it.

  51. 51.

    daverave

    October 7, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    Whenever I leave the country, I am astounded by the quality, breadth and sheer weight of foreign newspapers… even if I can’t read the language. Why can’t we do that?

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