Los Angeles Times owner Sam Zell didn't file for bankruptcy because the newspaper business is being battered by the recession or by online competition. He went into Chapter 11 because of the irresponsible and boneheaded deal he made to take over Tribune Co. in the first place. Zell's own financial chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately, the people who are paying the price for his recklessness are the citizens of Los Angeles and the staff of their premier paper. [Click for MORE]
A Perfect Storm? No, A Failure of Leadership
A bit of unsolicited advice to business executives trying to explain why their company or their industry is suddenly in the soup:
Please spare us the "perfect storm" metaphor.
It's hackneyed, for starters. It doesn't square with the facts. And for people who fancy themselves leaders, it's downright unbecoming.
The reason the perfect storm is such an appealing metaphor for these shipwrecked captains of industry is that it appears to let them off the hook. After all, who can blame you if the ship goes down in one of those freak, once-in-a-century storms that result when three weather systems collide? It's an act of nature that nobody could have predicted -- or so the story goes. [Click for MORE]
In Los Angeles, where I live, there was plenty of snickering this week about Tribune Company's decision to file for bankruptcy protection. Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, which in recent years has seen its staff cut even more than its circulation and advertising.
The once mighty Times has managed to give almost everyone in Los Angeles a reason to hate it, as it cycled through editors and publishers and one staff reduction after another. You don't have to be a youthful new media type to brag about canceling your subscription to the Times, or how you get your news online, or how what used to take half a Sunday to read now only takes half an hour.
Similar snickers, albeit perhaps quieter ones, followed the news that the cash-strapped New York Times was taking out a mortgage to make ends meet. Who needs these dinosaurs?
The answer is: everyone who cares about politics or government or the arts or culture. They do two things that almost no one else does: report and edit. [Click for MORE]
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