Confidential to Sam Zell: You're Not Funny

Dear Sam,

We get it. You're not like all the other moguls. You're an off-the-chain, out-of-the-box, envelope-pushing radical. No cliché is too strong to describe your utter disregard for convention.

Now, please, for the love of God, give it a rest with the wacky press releases already.

It's not that using Borscht Belt humor and boob jokes to communicate with the public is indecorous for an $8 billion corporation. Let's face it: Tribune isn't worth anything like $8 billion these days.

It's not that there's something grotesque and callous about a company whose executives are having a chuckle even as they draw up plans to put hundreds more workers out on the street in the midst of a recession. We know that's not the kind of thing that keeps you up at night, Sam.

No, it's the thuddingly, wince-inducingly unfunny nature of the jokes themselves. Take this latest release, announcing the hiring of Tim Dukes as vice president of promotions for broadcast and interactive:

"Sean Compton, the SVP/programming for our broadcasting division, and I wanted one special person to lead our national promotional efforts online and on-air and to complement the existing product pros at Tribune," said Marc Chase, Tribune Interactive president. "When that person wasn't available, we went to Tim instead."

Really, Sam? A giant conglomerate full of professional writers and producers, and the best you can come up with is material Henny Youngman cut from his bar mitzvah speech?

Sam, if you're going to keep inflicting these "zany" announcements on us, the least you could do is hire someone with a functioning sense of humor to punch them up before you push them out on the wires. I know Tribune is doing more firing than hiring these days, but clearly being seen as a funny guy is important to you. And right now, we're laughing at you, not with you.

All best,
Jeff

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