Chicago Daily Observer

"It's the deal from hell," says Sam Zell, never one to mince words. "And it will continue to be the deal from hell until we turn it around." Zell is talking, of course, about his $8.5 billion purchase of Tribune Co. in December 2007, a transaction that's shaping up to be one of the most disastrous the media world has ever seen. Zell is a real estate tycoon, and his plush office reflects his decades of success: Giant even by CEO standards, it brims with paintings and statues and looks out on a private garden above the Chicago River. One item that stands out among the clutter is an upside-down map of the world, a prop presumably intended to convince visitors that they're in the presence of an iconoclast. Zell, 66 and fiercely devoted to blue jeans, has burnished that image carefully over the years.

You couldn’t ask for a bigger task. Turn around a newspaper giant when the newspaper business is sinking fast, perhaps irretrievably. There are few institutions more stodgy and resistant to innovation than a newspaper, and especially a large one like the Chicago Tribune.

Sam Zell and his band of unconventional managers are trying anyway. I like their style. This presentation is instructive and entertaining. If anybody can break the mindset and possibly reinvent the product, it might be Zell.

Do you remember watching previous Tribune management talks to employees on the Internet? This is more than a shakeup—it’s an upheaval.