Alden Proposes Purchase of Tribune Publishing

Just run the hell away from this industry and never look back

 

This takeover is a disaster But hurray for Baltimore Sun reporters

 

WSJ News Exclusive | Los Angeles Times Owner Exploring Sale of Company

 

I do not understand the newspaper business from the inside.

So, can someone explain how and/or why having a paper run as a non-profit entity is superior to having the paper owned and run by a corporation or owned and run by an extremely wealthy individual such as Jeff Bezos (today) or William Randolph Hearst ( yesterday)?

 

A nonprofit isn’t going to slash the staff to the bone to protect the profit margin for the shareholders.

 

Well, that's the 2009 argument.

Now they're slashing staff to the bone to keep the lights on.

Don't underestimate the role of debt in all this. More than one corporation took on huge debt loads just before things started to go south in a hurry. Minus the debt loads, the road would have been bumpy. With the debt loads, it just ran off a cliff.

When the banks loaned Zell some $8 billion to buy Tribune in 2007, the ink was barely dry on the paper before the banks were only getting 90 cents on the dollar when they tried to sell the debt. "Solvency" was the question, not "profit margins."

 

https://nypost.com/2021/02/19/janice-min-withdraws-from-la-times-editor-search-amid-sale-talk/

 

Dr. Soon's denials notwithstanding, I highly doubt that WSJ invented this possibility out of thin air.

 

Prolly looking to dump U-T.

Anyway, not to go all Fredrick but $500K for editor of the LAT is all you need to know about the newspaper biz. Good Lord that's embarrassingly low for an executive position.

 

$500,000 salary. To be editor of the LAT.

You call that "low," in 2021? I hope that's sarcasm.

 

It's low for anyone running a multimillion-dollar organization of hundreds of employees in Southern California. Undoubtedly.

Maybe he should go to work as a Port Pilot II for the City of LA.

2011–2019 salaries for Los Angeles | Transparent California