"Yes, Your Local News May Be Written in the Philippines for Slave Wages"

[XanaDUer]

More outsourcing fun...

Chicagoan Sam Zell is one of the multi-billionaires of the US. But there are so many Americans in the one percent with billions of dollars that Zell, poor soul, only ranks 66th richest person in America.

In 2007, he bought the ailing Chicago Tribune Company and promised he would use free-market and Murdoch-like pandering to the public to save the communications empire. Zell, formerly known as a Chicago icon of the one percent (albeit with a sort of eccentric streak), was now in the publishing and broadcast business big-time.

He made a splashy entrance to the traditional journalistic world of the Tribune Company when he lambasted a Tribune reporter for asking, in essence, if he was going to turn the Tribune into a tabloid. His response was brief. It ended with "F*ck You!" (It's all on videotape.)

Zell may be admired by the Chicago and national business press for his irreverent, edgy swagger, but his biggest accomplishment since taking over the Tribune Company has been the sale of the Chicago Cubs and the Tribune going into bankruptcy. (It should be noted that the Tribune Company also owns a number of high-profile newspapers, and television and radio stations around the United States.)

MORE AT:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13582

[coalition_unwilling]

1. Bwa-ha-ha. When the Trib's bean counters took over the LA Times (via

the acquisition of Times Media), they managed to drive the paid daily subscription rate well below 1,000,000. In the nation's second-largest city, mind you.

When they fired Bob Scheer and brought on their right-wing columnists (like Max Boot and some other Neanderthal whose name eludes me now), that gesture endeared them to me