Chairman Sam Zell is finally walking away from the professional and financial firestorm known as Tribune.  Since buying the company in 2007, Zell has seen Tribune undergo everything from bankruptcy filings to a sexually charged email written by a “frat boy” executive.  In an interview with CNBC last night, Zell announced that he will be stepping away from Tribune and “doesn’t envision having any role going forward.”

Referring to the Tribune purchase as “the deal from hell,” Zell made it clear that he wishes to wash his hands of the whole situation:

“As soon as the bankruptcy proceedings are done, I’ll turn it over to whoever the creditors decide they want to run it.”

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Junior creditors, who have been owed money by Sam Zell and keep getting rebuffed in their requests to handle the bankruptcy management of the company, have asked the U.S. bankruptcy court to file a complaint against Zell and his management, claiming that they knew the entire time that they were driving the Tribune company into the ground, and in fact it was part of their game plan all along. The complaint alleges that Zell’s 2007 buyout was a “fraudulent conveyance” and asks that those senior lenders who helped fund the deal be cut off from all of Tribune’s assets.

Read More:
Junior Creditors Call Tribune Co. Bankruptcy ‘Fraudulent Conveyance’ –Editor & Publisher

Previously: Bankrupt Tribune Company Hands Out $45 Million In Bonuses

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But now we know why Zell and other top brass at Tribune don’t want to turn management over to the creditors: that way they wouldn’t be able to pay themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after two years when many of their employees went on strike because of job cuts and poor working conditions.

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According to a memo signed by Tribune’s COO Gerry Spector and chief executive Randy Michaels yesterday, “it appears we will finish the year with close to $500 million in operating cash flow.” This comes two months after Zell pleaded with the Delaware bankruptcy court for an extension on the amount of time needed to scrape his company out of bankruptcy.

Despite protests from the Tribune’s lenders (who most likely see Zell’s grace period as a stalling technique, and wished to take control of the reorganizing procedures), the Tribune execs promised that they could get the company out of bankruptcy by May 31. Though with this figure of $500 million now being floated around — over $100 million more than originally anticipated — that day may come sooner than the publisher anticipated. It’s one thing to boost morale with a memo about the tons of money you’re currently raking in, it’s quite another to do so with creditors breathing down your neck. Stay tuned as more information develops.

Full memo after the jump.

Read More: Tribune: We finished 2009 with close to $500 million in operating cash flow –Romenesko

Previously: Tribune Co.’s No Good, Very Bad Week, Tribune Plans To Emerge From Bankruptcy By May 31

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Wow, people really cared about Condé Nast‘s epicurean magazine Gourmet, huh? Not only did our readers vote it the saddest magazine closing in 2009, but also the biggest media misstep (by 39 percent) made in a year that was chock-full of wrong turns and dead-ends.

Surprisingly, nobody thought BusinessWeek‘s sale to Bloomberg LP was the biggest mistake (except for former BusinessWeek employees, of course), while only 4 percent thought that The New York Post‘s firing of editor Sandra Guzman after speaking out against its controversial cartoon was the biggest blunder. In fact, what about the cartoon itself, which we didn’t put on our poll but certainly belongs in the Top 10 “D’oh!” moments of 2009.

Meanwhile coming in second place was our all-encompassing reference to “Everything the Tribune Co. has done this year,” which ranges from endlessly pushing back their filing of a Chapter 11 reorganization plan while their lenders grew impatient, to letting some of their best writers and editors go over to the Chicago News Cooperative. All of those things lead to 24 percent of our readers shaking their heads at the many, many mistakes of Sam Zell and Tribune Co.

With 12 percent of the votes, readers chose to pick Rupert Murdoch‘s war with Google as the biggest mistake of the year…although since Murdoch has yet to act on his threats, and the move to Microsoft’s Bing might actually be beneficial to Murdoch and other news companies in the long run, we’ll have to wait to see how that pans out.

Coming in with four percent was Long Island newspaper Newsday‘s decision to put up a pay wall for its Web site, so have fun paying for your news next year, guys. Also given four percent of the vote was Reader’s Digest‘s bankruptcy filing, though the publisher’s decision to shut down Purpose Driven Connection was probably one of the best moves of the year.

And of course, nine percent of our readers decided to be contrary and choose “Other.” Maybe they were thinking that the government’s lack of a bailout for the media was the biggest misstep we saw in 2009?

Previously: Reader’s Digest Files For Ch. 11, What Was The Media’s Biggest Misstep in 2009?, Video: News Corp. Gets Grinchy With Google , Is the New York Post Comparing Obama to a Rabid Monkey?

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Now it looks like Zell is taking matters into his own hands and starting the reorganization process already. Yesterday, several executives were shuffled around the company, including Gerry Spector‘s move to COO of Tribune Co. from chief administrative officer, and CFO Chandler Bigelow‘s expansion of his role to include financial operations in publishing and human resources. Nils Larsen was also named CIO “effective immediately.”

Press release after the jump

Read More: Tribune Co. reorganizes executives, names Gerry Spector chief operating officer –Chicago Tribune

Previously: Tribune Co.’s No Good, Very Bad Week

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Sam Zell is not going to be having the greatest Thanksgiving this year: not only has The New York Times enlisted some of his former Tribune Company employees to write the paper’s new Chicago edition, but the newspaper publisher’s request for an extension on its exclusive right to file a reorganization plan to lift the company from Chapter 11 is a being challenged by the company’s creditors, Editor & Publisher reports.

It’s been almost a year since Tribune filed for bankruptcy and it wants to maintain control over its reorganization plan, which it has yet to file to the court for approval. Two weeks ago, top execs at Tribune asked for an extension for the filing of the plan until May, with the promise that the fourth quarters are traditionally the strongest at the company’s papers. Now some of Tribune’s lenders are seeking to block Tribune’s extension request and asking to see more evidence for their allegations that the company’s 2007 going-private deal was a fraudulent conveyance.

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Richard Rushfield is one of the few West Coasters that are still kept on Gawker‘s payroll. Hell, even Gabriel Snyder had to move back to New York to take the job as managing editor of the online publication. And if that doesn’t make him an outlier enough, Rushfield actually quit The Los Angeles Times (and no, that’s not code for “got fired by Sam Zell” or “took a buyout package”) to take on the role of a full-time blogger. Now he has a book out called Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost, about what some would call was his counter-intuitive switch from mainstream to digital media.

Our colleagues over at FishbowlLA had a chance to sit down with Rushfield and pin him down on why he left an editor’s job to work at a blog. From their interview, we’ve hypothesized three theories on what makes Rushfield so well suited for the blogosphere.

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To be fair, employees will still receive their first share allocations of ESOP, a program that gives employees options in their company. But as The Los Angeles Times noted, “those allocations won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on because of the bankruptcy.” And the Times should know: They are one of the papers owned by the ill-fated Tribune Co., along with The Chicago Tribune.

So, when the company went bankrupt, employees received shares, but now that the banks have bought out Zell, the stock (no pun intended) that the staffers put into their publication is no longer an option.

Read more: Tribune to end employee stock ownership plan

Earlier: Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy, Tales of the Tribune Co.: It’s All Gone Straight to Zell

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Or will they? The Tribune Company announced yesterday that it will be conducting a trial run of its papers (mostly) free of news from The Associated Press to see if the papers can do without the service. Still, it’s not much of an experiment: Sam Zell‘s papers will still be relying on Reuters, GlobalPost, and other international news orgs. Whatever Tribune is trying to prove here is already rendered moot on their dependence on outside news bureaus. Ironically, one of the places Tribune will be taking their news from is The New York Times, which is entering a relationship with The Chicago News Cooperative, a non-profit news organization made up of ex-Tribune employees, for content for its local Chicago edition.

We’ve asked a similar question before in our polls, but we’d like to hear your thoughts: Can publications exist without independent news bureaus? And if not, what kind of content should publishers be willing to pay these outside services for?

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Sam Zell visited Bloomberg TV to proclaim that Tribune Co. would be out of bankruptcy by the end of the first quarter. But when asked if he regretted the deal — if it was, in fact, the “worst business decision he’s ever made” — he didn’t back down.

“It’s certainly the most amount of money I’ve ever lost in a single deal,” he said.

However, Zell said that given the challenges facing all newspaper companies, “Nobody can survive.”

Yesterday, we had New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. comparing print media to the Titanic, and today Zell admits that the end is near. Uh oh.

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Now James O’Shea‘s new project has attracted another Chicago Tribune writer, famed columnist David Greising, who will be leaving Sam Zell‘s publishing nightmare for more cooperative pastures.

Greising was the Tribune‘s chief business correspondent, so it’s hard not to take his departure as a microcosm of Tribune Co.’s quickly decaying structure. Greising will be joining former Tribune managing editor James Warren and former Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski.

Tribune’s Greising Joins O’Shea’s Chicago News Cooperative –Crain’s Chicago Business

Earlier: Jim O’Shea Explains The Chicago News Cooperative

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Yesterday we learned that former Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times staffers were working to create content for The New York Times that will compete with pubs owned by their old employer, Tribune Co. The former Tribune editors have created a non-profit “content co-op” called the Chicago News Cooperative, which will provide news content for the Times‘ local Chicago edition, among other news outlets.

One of the co-op’s editors, Jim O’Shea — a former Tribune and L.A. Times editor — sat down with another one of CNC’s partners, television station WTTW in Chicago, to discuss their work at greater length.

Here, O’Shea talks about the creation of the collective and its plans and goals for the future.

Earlier: Tribune Employees To Create Content For NYT In Chicago

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And James E. O’Shea, a former Los Angeles Times editor and Chicago Tribune managing editor, is defecting to the new Chicago-based non-profit group, The Chicago News Cooperative, that will be providing the Times with local content for its Chicago edition — which is similar to the Bay Area edition launched last week.

Also part of the group, which is funded in part by The MacArthur Foundation (known for their NPR patronage and support of journalists) is Ann Marie Lipinski, former Tribune editor. That’s both great news for the Times, which is looking expand its local content to different areas of the nation, and a giant stick in Zell’s craw. Everyone wins?

Chicago News Venture To Sell Content To New York Times — New York Times

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FishbowlDC: CQ-Roll Call cut 44 jobs today, before unveiling a big restructuring of the company.

Editor & Publisher: John Sturm, the president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America told a joint economic hearing today that the newspaper industry was not looking for a government bailout.

The Boston Phoenix: The Boston Globe‘s biggest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, has taken measures to prevent union president Dan Totten from handling union finances. “Information has come to the attention of the Executive Committee that President Daniel Totten has engaged in conduct which appears to be violative of the constitution regarding financial matters involving Local funds,” the union said in a note to members.

New York Times: Some Tribune bondholders have been granted access to documents in order to investigate the 2007 of the company to Sam Zell.

WowoWow: “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl interviews Ted Jr., Sen. Edward Kennedy‘s son, and the editor and publisher who worked with the senator on his memoir. (See video above)

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