Major newspapers have gone to Zell

Hugh Hewitt posted this within the past hour. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Tribune Company, parent firm of the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, the Hartford Courant and Long Island's Newsday  ( found out it had recently been sold, sorry) is about to file for bankruptcy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122868944355686385.html?mod=testMod

Awhile back the primary ownership interest in this firm was bought by a Chicago real estate billionaire. Sam Zell. Zell was renowned in the '90-92 recession for picking up distressed office properties (including plenty  in Stamford) and reaping huge gains when the economy rebounded. I suppose he did not find enough surplus realty owned by Tribune to make this deal work, or the real estate bubble burst at the same time as the media bubble.

Tribune has been trying to cut staff at the print operations fast enough to remain solvent, but with big advertisers like banks and car dealers sucking wind this is race they are not winning.  The firm also owns the baseball Cubs and some TV stations--that's probably the net value of the firm.

Odd a stock priced at 18 is filing; but maybe Zell is trying to recover something now before the recession sucks all the value out of this conglomerate.