Tribune Company orders $100 million in cuts.

And that $100 million is entirely from the newspaper division.

http://www.robertfeder.com/2013/09/27/tribune-co-confirms-everything-is-on-the-table/

 

Tribune proposal: Its newspapers will have to pay rent and a dividend: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/business/media/plan-for-tribune-spinoff-raises-concerns-for-future-of-newspaper-operations.html?smid=tw-share

 

Looks like Jim O'Shea should write a sequel. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/28/entertainment/la-et-book-20110628

 

That was such a good book. Sam Zell's associates were such idiots, and the news judgment they employed... ouch.

 

"They" as in ownership, but yet talked of as if it's the enemy. Boo-effing-hoo. Earn your keep, pay your way. Rent is a fact of life. And gee, newsroom leadership has done such a crackerjack job in the past with "online ventures and exploring new markets," right? Drips with sense of entitlement that explains a lot about the political bias inherent in newsrooms.

Too bad, so sad.

 

I hope the Ghosts of Newspapers Past visit the assholes who run this organization tonight and instead of Christmas Carol it turns into a Hostel type deal.

 

They're still owned by the parent company. Tribune is just putting in some paperwork saying that they're (wink, wink), with a different company.

It's like a kid moving back home with his parents after college. The kid gets a job, and pays some rent to his parents. After a while, the parents kick the kid out, but tell him that he now has to pay additional rent and an additional part of his salary because the parents are no longer getting rental income because they kicked their kid out.

 

This is a shell move to allow Tribune Co. to borrow money to pay higher dividends to stockholders -- stockholders like senior management. In a country not run by large corporations (try and find one!), this would be a jail time move.

 

If the newspapers own/owned the buildings and now corporate is going to make them pay rent, when they presumably aren't getting a big fat check for the worth of the buildings first....that's theft not entitlement.

One of the benefits of owning a place is not paying rent. A company renting its own property to itself seems ridiculous.

 

Rent was paid on my old newsroom that the company "owned." Real estate was split off and incorporated as its own company and my paper, among others, paid rent on the buildings they used.

It was explained, then, that it had tax advantages and such but it also meant as the downtown became more of a destination and the property value increased, we had people, from time to time, come by and look.

Then we moved to another building because we had office space for hundreds and because of layoffs we were down to dozens.

So it goes.

 

Next up: Tribune makes employees pay rent for their desks and computers.

 

Even Bud Selig could see that:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/14/sports/la-sp-0815-dodgers-rent-20100815