He gone. Too bad. I loved his NBA articles.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 3792.story

That makes one of us. His rumor mongering may have been entertaining, but he was known by some in the NBA for being a sloppy journalist and inaccurately paraphrasing supposed direct quotes in his work. Mark Cuban once wrote in his blog about him, calling him the "Jayson Blair" of the Tribune for simply making stuff up. My experience with such buyouts (and I'm not assuming this is the case here) is that buyouts like this are often a conveinent way for managers to get rid of the lowest-performing employees. I can't help but wonder if some of the complaints about Sam from NBA people about his fabrications finally added up in his personnel file.

While these were "voluntary" buyouts, it is not clear whether everybody in a certain employee class (say age 57 and older, or age 55 and older with 25 years experience, etc.) were offered the buyouts. Most companies make that very clear publicly when they announce buyouts that everyone is a certain class are eligible. If the Trib did that, the reporter chose not to include it in the story. So leaving this out of the story begs the question: If only certain people at the Trib were offered the golden handshakes and they were not dependent on objective criteria like age, then one can surmise who was offered the buyouts was based in part on other factors, such as job performance or redundancies. Rosenthal may not have intended to throw his fellow reporters affected under the bus, but choosing to leave those facts out of the story begs the question why he did. Had Rosenthal said "everybody age __ and older were offered the golden handshakes", he would have prevented that kind of speculation about the people who are leaving.

If there were buyouts offered at the Trib it's because they're trying to cut staff. Smith was probably making pretty good money, and they felt buying him out would save them in the long run, and that the work he did could be done by others. For instance, the Sun-Times recently got rid of their TV critic Doug Elfman, because they have enough entertainment reporters who could fill in and write a tv review or tv related story when needed.

NBD, I never liked him or Doug Elfman.

What will we do now for Wild Ass Guesses of trades?

This is just the beginning of the gutting of the Tribune. In a few years, we won't even recognize this paper--that is, if it still exists.

_________________

I agree TM. The race is on to see which paper in Chicago buys the other and puts the other out of their misery. Zell buys and sells; he doesn't buy, invest and grow a business. The long term damage of the FitzSimons regime will not be the decline in circulation or even the decline in value of the Tribune company. It will be selling out to a real estate investor who only put in pennies ($300 million) on the dollar of his own money and is intent on managing the newspaper as he would an office building.

Why would Zell buy the Sun-Times when it's gonna go out of business anyway?

The only reason to buy it would be to eliminate competition. The Sun-Times will be eliminated naturally by the looks of things. Then the Trib will be the only paper in town. So why bother buying the Sun-Times? If it goes out then the Trib owns the market. I doubt anybody else would try to start up a new paper in town.

As bad as the newspaper industry is, there will always be 1 paper in a city like Chicago. The Trib will always exist Chicago. I guarantee that.

The Sun Times' bond holders and other debtors will want to get something for their assets before they shut it down. If and when it gets to that point, they will want to sell those assets. The Trib is the most likely buyer. If the Trib buys those assets, that eliminates the possibility of someone else buying them and trying to make a go of it competing with the Trib. Even struggling newspapers have assets with significant value to the competition (circulation lists, advertiser contracts, etc.). It would cost the Trib, or any business, a lot more to go out and try to capture the Sun Times' circulation and advertiser base anew then it would be to simply buy the existing subscriptions and ad contracts for pennies on the dollar. When papers are going under, very often the competitor buys the assets of the competing paper, but doesn't buy the paper company itself because they don't want the liabilities. Then the paper is shut down. That has happened several times in other cities and in other businesses. It's especially true when the competing paper can buy those assets for pennies on the dollar in a distressed situation, as looks to be the case with the Sun Times. You buy valuable assets for pennies on the dollar and eliminate the possibility of competition. Financial guys would understand a lot more about how asset acquisitions like this are done, but that's my take.

Ok Coast. That makes sense.

One more question.

Wouldn't the Trib buying the Sun-Times violate antitrust laws?

The way things are going, the only paper that may be left in Chicago will be the Reader.

Any word on where Sam Smith goes next ? ESPN.Com or Hoopshype.com, some other paper ?

You left out difficult and self important.

Nice work by Sam Smith today. From his article:

From the NY Daily news tonight

I'll miss your quality rumors.