Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Ouch. Owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and The Chicago Cubs baseball team. $13 Billion in debt. <a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/tribune-files-for-bankruptcy/?hp" target="_blank">http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes....ptcy/?hp</a>
Originally Posted By mawnck They also own quite a few major market television stations, including Channel 5 in Los Angeles.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder The Cubs are not included in the BK. people saw this coming as soon as Zell bought the Tribune.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA I read that they're thinking of selling the Cubs to Mark Cuban. ugh. I think going bankrupt might be a better plan.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Cuban is out after the insider trading charge. Money is on a guy named John Canning, a friend of Commissioner Bud Selig.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh Road Trip was saying on another thread that overly negative reports by the media made the downturn worse. It's quite possible that the media is so pessimistic because they are doing so badly. Besides the Tribune, the stock of the NY Times has been declining for years, and recently hit junk status. News rooms started shedding jobs before most other industries.
Originally Posted By Mr X ***Road Trip was saying on another thread that overly negative reports by the media made the downturn worse.*** You actually listen to this guys' opinion? He came up with every excuse in the books about how everything was "fine", and if it wasn't it had everything to do with anything BUT an actually bad economy. Including this little gem he pulled out of his rear end. It's ridiculous. If anything, the press has been overly optimistic to the point of irresponsibility until very recently. ***It's quite possible that the media is so pessimistic because they are doing so badly.*** This I might believe. But only recently though (on the negativity, NOT the fact they were doing poorly long before as I know they were).
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy Newspapers are in really dire straits right now. They didn't adapt quickly enough to the internet and most of their business have disappeared to start-ups in the online world. The biggest blow to newspapers is the loss of most of their classified ad revenue to the likes of Craigslist, Ebay, online real estate listings, and job-search sites like Monster.com. Classified ads were a huge revenue source for newspapers that has virtually disappeared without anything to replace it.
Originally Posted By fkurucz ^^Which is why they became shills for the Real Estate industry. It was perhaps their #1 source of advertising revenue, until the bubble burst.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <You actually listen to this guys' opinion?> Yes. He makes more sense more often than you. And he's rarely rude, unless it's in response to someone being rude to him.
Originally Posted By alexbook >>Newspapers are in really dire straits right now. They didn't adapt quickly enough to the internet and most of their business have disappeared to start-ups in the online world.<< The Tribune Company's papers are actually *making* money, but not enough to make the payments on the parent company's massive debts. This is a Wall Street failure, not a newspaper failure.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 this also includes WGN TV and radio among other holdings.They appear to have been over extended credit wise..and the market got them.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Exactly, alexbook. Most newspapers still have profit margins that other industries would kill for, but for the Wall Street crowd, that's not enough.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Most newspapers still have profit margins that other industries would kill for, but for the Wall Street crowd, that's not enough. >> If it were two years ago, I would agree. However, the craigslist phenomenon has really taken on a life of its own and killed classified ads industry-wide. Newspapers have no way of replacing this revenue -- which was very significant. Even a year ago, newspaper revenues were looking healthy but things have really deterioted fast in the advertising front.
