Get the Zell Out

All good things must come to an end. And so, too, has Sam Zell's disastrous reign as CEO of the Tribune Company.

The Associated Press (among others) is reporting that Zell has stepped down as chief of Tribune and will be replaced by Randy Michaels. Zell remains chairman of the board.

Nearly three years ago, Zell bought the Chicago-based publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and numerous other print, television, and radio properties for $8.2 billion dollars, much of it drawn from the company's own employees' stock.

Almost immediately, things in the media sector went south, and Zell eventually told Portfolio, "the newspaper business and advertising, generally, has gone off a cliff."

After a year of layoffs, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008. In August, 2009, Tribune bondholders filed a request in Wilmington, Delaware, court to see if Zell's purchase drove the company to bankruptcy.

New CEO Michaels had previously been COO of Tribune and was also chairman and CEO of Clear Channel Communications. "This appointment reflects Randy's increasing responsibilities," Zell said in a statement (here quoted by Editor & Publisher's Jennifer Saba.)

"There is a lot of work yet to do," Michaels said in the release. That may be the second-biggest understatement of the year.

The biggest, coincidentally, was former CEO Zell's, when he spoke to Bloomberg in April and said of his acquisition of the company, "I made a mistake."