71. The day the music died

Zell hung on to control of the paper by virtue of the 40 percent of the Tribune Company he optioned to buy in 2007, when he took the company private through a leveraged buyout. The purchase option cost Zell about $315 million.

Tribune has $13 billion in debt and less than $8 billion in hard assets. Most of the company’s debt resulted from Zell’s acquisition of Tribune – a deal now being investigated by the IRS and the Labor Department. What remains of the company’s equity is owned by the employees themselves through their stock-ownership plan. It’s likely to get wiped out when Zell heads for the exit and creditors pick over Tribune’s remains.

(Because the employee ownership plan is new, financial analysts believe that its losses may be relatively small.)

The end of the Zell era at the Los Angeles Times will come only a few weeks before PBS nationally (and Angel City Press locally) focus on the family that controlled the paper during its first hundred years. Inventing L.A. – The Chandlers and Their Times is likely to be a painful reminder of how much the Chandlers and the Times fashioned from sunshine and dreams.

As for Sam Zell . . . He's celebrated in recent years with an odd gift tradition. He gives an elaborate music box to a friend’s list of more than 600. His year-end gift for 2008 – sent in 2009 – was different. Zell sent a card that said "Somebody stopped the music."

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Kansas Sebastian. It was used under a Creative Commons license.