THURSDAY'S completion of the $8.2-billion transaction that transformed the Tribune Co. from a publicly traded corporation into a private, nonprofit organization owned by its employees, but run by billionaire investor Sam Zell, brought a disastrous journalistic experiment to an ignominious close.
Until Tribune acquired Times Mirror -- the Los Angeles Times' then-parent company -- in 2000, no first-tier American newspaper ever had been run by corporate managers. It was an old industry truism that, while not all family-owned newspapers were great newspapers, all great U.S. newspapers were family-owned, as The Times had been since its founding. The question then was: Can a corporation -- and Tribune was about as corporate as an organization possibly can be -- successfully run a first-water paper.
Now we know the answer is no.
There's no need to belabor the multiple reasons for that failure, but suffice to say that, as of Wednesday, there were only three places in the world where you still could find people who believed in the efficacy of Brezhnev-style bureaucracy and central planning: North Korea, Cuba and Tribune Tower in Chicago.
Zell has moved quickly to cut the organization's Gordian knot, announcing he was taking over personally as chief executive and would assume direct supervision of The Times' and Chicago Tribune's publishers, who will be free to run their papers as local concerns, so long as they achieve an adequate financial performance. Since going private entailed taking on $13 billion in debt, that latter point will be a critical one.
It also needs to be noted that the newspaper industry's recent flirtation with private equity has thus far born mostly unhappy results. Here in Southern California, important suburban newspapers like the Orange County Register (the Blackstone Group) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Pasadena Star-News and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune (Dean Singleton) all have been savagely diminished since falling into their hands.
There are, in other words, no guarantees.
In an e-mail sent to Tribune Co. employees right after the sale closed Thursday, Zell signaled something concerning the spirit of change he intends to instill:
"We've now launched the boat together, and we have to start paddling. We've got a long way to go to shed all the things that tied us down in the past, and to realize the enormous potential we can create. You'll see a lot of changes in the coming months.
