Fly on the Wall: Fixing the Newspaper Crisis

February 20, 2008


Sam Zell’s Talk at the Chicago Tribune from margaret on Vimeo
Length: One hour - Source: Daniel Honigman
Due to its length, I highly recommend watching at least the first 25 minutes and the last few minutes starting at 57:15 for the most emotionally-charged Q&A.

This is it! This is your opportunity to be a fly on the wall during the Chicago Tribune stop of the great Sam Zell Tribune Tour of 2008. As the Tribune Company’s new chairman and chief executive, Zell visited several company offices to share his vision with employees.

As a straight-talking, gunslinging business executive, he also shared a few vulgarities. At the Orlando Sentinel, Zell was caught on video saying f@%k you to a reporter after her question.

Beyond the bad language, which isn’t the story here, this video is unbelievable insight for any management student or business executive wanting a case study on how to build the bottom line and save a company in a downward spiral. It also provides some great talking points for leaders to take note. And for those monitoring media trends, this is the best behind-the-scenes glimpse I’ve seen of how one newspaper plans to tackle the crisis.

According to today’s Tribune story and the video above (skip to 57:15):

“I’m not disrespecting anybody. I’m trying to make everybody uncomfortable,” Zell said. “This business has been eroding before your eyes and you’re worried about my language? … Everything I said was with an intent to get everybody to get off their [behinds] and understand this is a crisis. We’ve got to save this business. We’ve got to make this work. And we’ve got to prioritize what we get all pushed out of shape about. … If we keep operating the way we’ve been operating, there is no future.”

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Educational, Management, Media, Presentations, Strategies+Tactics, Video 

Comments

One Response to “Fly on the Wall: Fixing the Newspaper Crisis”

  1. Daniel on February 20th, 2008 10:53 am

    And it seems that most of the cuts at the Tribune will be in non-newsroom jobs, e.g. finance, HR, etc. It’ll be interesting to see what happens

    Thanks for the link, Todd!

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