Kurtz on Trib's Chapter 11, Blagojevich

Howard Kurtz has this report on the Chicago Tribune's bankruptcy in this morning's Washington Post. The Trib filed Monday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Says Kurtz:

The Tribune bankruptcy is a stunner. So it took Sam Zell exactly one year after buying the place to go the Chapter 11 route. That's what happens when you take on a $13-billion debt load (and, in fairness, the economy tanks).

I don't see the L.A. Times or the Chicago Tribune or the Baltimore Sun or the company's TV stations going away, but they could get badly hurt in a bankruptcy reorganization. It's a harbinger of how bad things are in the business, with McClatchy putting the Miami Herald up for sale. Writing about newspapers is starting to feel like writing about the Detroit automakers.

"Tribune's problems were made significantly worse by the unusual $8.2 billion deal put together last year by Mr. Zell, which took the company private and nearly tripled its debt load, driving the company deeper into debt than any other major newspaper publisher," says the New York Times.

"The company has cut its staff and products, deeply and repeatedly, in an attempt to stay ahead of debt payments. In May, it also sold one of its most profitable newspapers, Newsday, to Cablevision for $650 million."

And this telling sentence: "Mr. Zell took control of the company on Dec. 20, 2007, and installed top managers who, like him, had no background in newspapers."

The L.A. Times points out "parallel troubles afflicting many other newspaper and broadcasting companies nationwide: In recent weeks, the McClatchy newspaper chain put its Miami Herald up for sale, the Christian Science Monitor said it would abandon daily print publication in favor of Web operation, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Minneapolis Star-Tribune have flirted with or entered default, and the New York Times said it would mortgage its headquarters skyscraper in midtown Manhattan to help cover operating costs."

Immediately following is this squib:

Back to politics: Illinois politics is starting to reek, as we see in this Tribune report:

"A three-year federal corruption investigation of pay-to-play politics in Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration has expanded to include his impending selection of a new U.S. senator to succeed President-elect Barack Obama, the Tribune has learned."

Blagojevich's reaction: "I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously, and those who feel like they want to sneakily, and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate."

Uh, Nixon taped himself, Governor.

Yep, that's what Blagojevich said. But I'd question Kurtz' assertion that "Illinois politics is starting to reek."