Travel Blog

When Sam Zell purchased the Tribune Company in April of 2007, employees didn’t quite know what to think – at least those of us toiling in the far reaches of the empire. At the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the day the news broke, we took the elevators downstairs and watched a video relay of the meeting being held in the Tribune Tower in Chicago. A reporter asked President and CEO Dennis FitzSimons what Zell’s vision for the Tribune was. FitzSimons, looking trim and relieved in shirtsleeves and tie, said he didn’t know.

Zell appeared to journalists as a swashbuckling moneybags. Soon we all knew the Horatio Alger story of how, as a boy, he had ripped off classmates by selling them Playboys for more than he had paid for them, and how, later in life, he had gotten a reputation for reviving moribund businesses (the latter action earning him the title “grave dancer”). Much was made of the fact that he never wore a tie.

Zell took over as chairman of the Tribune Company at the start of 2008, and came down to Fort Lauderdale to address the troops. He climbed onto the stage wearing jeans and a tight-fitting sportcoat, his shirt generously open at the neck. He declared, in a voice dripping with self-satisfaction, “I’m filthy rich” – adding that whatever happened to the company (which he had made private) would have little effect on him; we were the ones who stood to gain, or lose. He slouched and cursed and brought down the house.

The stuffed shirts were dead! Long live the enemy of cravates!

Soon, we began receiving emails from “Sam” asking for our suggestions on how to make the Tribune better. This struck us, at the time, as more democratic than desperate. Just as the new employee handbook, glib and cavalier, seemed to be a salvo fired at a bland and overly-cautious company (and product), not a green light for the top brass to behave like adolescents.

Zell’s stated resolve to increase revenues without reducing resources quickly eroded. One afternoon in July our editor gathered everyone in the newsroom and announced the first layoffs in the history of the Sun-Sentinel. Somehow I imagined that I would be a part of them.

A few days later the banner that had hung in the stairwell for months – “You Own This Place Now” – was gone. And Zellmania was officially over. After being thrilled that he didn’t wear a tie, people now realized he didn’t have a clue.