Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Couldn’t you just thank God for leadership like this?

04.15.2009 by David Murray // 2 Comments

After behaving like an an arrogant, vulgar asshole from the first day he purchased the Chicago Tribune in 2007, CEO Sam Zell admitted today that he made a mistake. 

Well, you paid a grillion dollars for the company two years ago, and now it's bankrupt. Big man!

Then, asked whether there might be a buyer for the company, Zell said:

"That's like asking someone in another business if they want to get
vaccinated with a live virus. There's not a long list of
people who want to buy newspaper companies today, and for sure it's not
likely to be the case until we reach some kind of a new bottom as to
what the newspaper's role is going to be in our society going forward."

Now, here was Zell a year or so ago at an employee town hall meeting at the Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel.

Hey Sam: Fuck you back.

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Comments

  1. Susan says

    April 16, 2009 at 8:48 am

    Does the saying, “You reap what you sow” apply here, perhaps?

    Reply
  2. David Murray says

    April 16, 2009 at 9:34 am

    A little more than a year ago in a fit of grandiosity, I actually wrote to Zell and told him his newspaper was dreadfully dull and told proposed to him that for the sum of $100K I’d give him 10 fascinating, imaginatively reported and well-writtten stories over the course of a year, the likes of which his lily-livered editors wouldn’t have the guts to publish. The stories could be a model for a newspaper that people would actually want to read.
    (See, I believe people will read interesting stories, and I don’t believe newspapers often report interesting stories.)
    He replied that he wasn’t nuts about some of the sample story ideas I proposed to him. I respected that. But then he added that he had to “trust my editors to give readers what they want.”
    I was too shocked at receiving a response to lecture him about how you can’t run a newspaper like a real estate company.

    Reply

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