Zell: Pulitzer, Shmulitzer, just show me the money

I'd rather have a job in 10 years than a Pulitzer.
So go ahead, have me prosecuted for heresy.

 

Zell is in trouble because he used 1980's-1990's business techniques (leveraged buyout) that is a disaster in 2008. That's a Zell problem, not a newspaper problem.

Oh and the reformatting of the LA Times is useless.

 

With Sam the Sham at the helm, it's a good bet that many current Trib employees will have neither.

 

None of you are going to win a Pulitzer. </spnited>

My ex-bosses were obsessed with awards. Win a shitload of awards and you got some cred, at least for a few days. But they had something to brag about.

As for me, I'd rather write stories that my readership cares about, awards or not. One award does not a great journalist make.

 

SAM: I say goodbye to my wife as I walk out the door, and I used to ask her, "What's the temperature?" Because if it's bitter cold, there's a problem. And then I would see her go, "Argh!" as she tried to find where the weather is in the newspapers. And in the reformatted Chicago Tribune in the bottom left-hand corner it says, "64 today, 75 tomorrow, 83 the next day," in one quarter of an inch in the lower left-hand corner. Isn't that information that everybody wants?
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If thats good for Chicago, why not the other Zell papers?

 

SAM: I say goodbye to my wife as I walk out the door, and I used to ask her, "What's the temperature?" Because if it's bitter cold, there's a problem. And then I would see her go, "Argh! Why don't you look at the thermostat, you lazy fuckhead?!"

 

Thermostat tells me it's 71 degrees inside.
Doesn't say boo about what it's like outside the door.
Duh.

 

You know, a lot of people actually have thermostats outside their doors or windows too.....you know, so they can see what the temperature is OUTSIDE.

Duh.

 

bash the messenger, that's fine.
but papers have been screwing the readers for ages and the little things that people complain about, the average newspaper doesn't care about.
things like consistent placement of highly read items, such as the weather, such as the obits, such as the crossword.
most newspaper have forgotten that the readers almost always buy the paper for much different reasons than what they think.
purely anecdotal, but my mom gets the paper because she want's the crossword, the jumble and the obits. she pays attention to the news, but since she lives in a small town, she relies on the local weekly for the super local news.

 

Zell's guy Abrams says that Trib TV crime reporters should dress up Columbo-style.

Finally he wants to get the talent out of all those stodgy suits: "What with the suits and ties. I'm not suggesting sloppy...but business casual...maybe even eccentric as the Crime expert could be in a Columbo styled rumpled sweater."

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/11/lee_abrams_tribune_should_study_us.php

 

Zell's tonedeaf. He loses the match on the first tee, because he apparently doesn't consider how unfeeling he can sound when he speaks,
within the situational contexts of his comments . . .

 

That would be a thermometer.
If you have a thermostat that can set the temperature of the outside world, you're truly special.