Michaels gone

The slow-motion firing of Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels has finally reached its end. He's gone, a board of four will take over until a new CEO is named. LA Biz Observed

Randy Michaels watch, day three

Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels has "decided to resign," according to the Chicago Tribune, and company executives have a succession plan in the works that includes Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein.

From the story:

Randy Michaels, Tribune Co.'s embattled chief executive, has decided to resign his post at the Chicago-based media company and intends to leave the company before the end of the week, sources close to the situation said.

He will be replaced by a four-member office of the president that the sources said would comprise Eddy Hartenstein, chief executive and publisher of the Los Angeles Times Media Group; Tony Hunter, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune Media Group; Nils Larsen, Tribune's chief investment officer; and Don Liebentritt, chief restructuring officer.

The development comes after weeks of turmoil at the bankrupt company, brought on by assertions that Michaels and his management team displayed boorish behavior and fostered a sexist, hostile work environment. The Tribune board met Tuesday, but no announcement on Michaels' fate followed.

-snip-

The sources said Michaels had willingly decided to make his exit, having concluded that it was best for the company under the circumstances. He and the board had determined that the turmoil was distracting employees, threatening to hurt business and complicating the company's efforts to emerge from a contentious bankruptcy process.

Does anyone else think the unnamed sources sound a lot like the company executives who forced Michaels to willingly resign his job?

Tribune has done a good job of turning what should have been a single "CEO fired" story into multiple days of incremental updates and anonymous leaks that have probably bored most readers and will end with Michaels announcing he's going to step aside for the good of all involved.

Randy Michaels not gone yet*

The Wall Street Journal confirms that the Tribune Co. board is debating whether to dump CEO Randy Michaels, but the paper reports that it remains unclear whether a decision will be made today.

*Update: The New York Times, which first reported Tribune Co. wanted Michaels gone, says that the board told Michaels he should resign but stopped short of demanding his resignation. Perhaps they think the company will look more stable if Michaels departs as part of some bankruptcy deal or something.

Tribune CEO Randy Michaels could be out of a job tomorrow

The firestorm surrounding Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels in recent days is what happens when your days are numbered and your supposed friends and colleagues become sources for a piece like this.

Whatever one thinks of the New York Times story that portrayed the Tribune executive suite as a low-rent frat house full of aging radio execs who think locker room chat is a form of creative enterprise, it should come as no surprise that Michaels would soon be shown the door. After all, little of the information in the story was new - its just that no insiders had felt the need to help the Times connect the dots. Until now.

And so the other shoe drops:

The board of directors of the Tribune Company is expected to ask Tuesday for the resignation of Randy Michaels, the controversial chief executive of the company, according to a person directly involved in the matter.

The individual, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, said the board had lost confidence in the ability of Mr. Michaels to lead the troubled company. 

Mr. Michael’s resignation would follow by days the exit of another top executive at the media company, Lee Abrams, Tribune’s chief innovation officer, who resigned on Friday after sending a sexually explicit memo to the entire company. 

All of this comes ahead of Tribune's expected emergence from nearly two years of often contentious bankruptcy proceedings. Michaels, who was brought in by company owner Sam Zell, would likely be out of a job even if it weren't for the bad press; especially since Zell himself will probably lose his stake in the company as part of the bankruptcy deal. The bad press about Michaels just adds momentum.

NY magazine can think of 13 reasons to dislike the Zell/Michaels era

Some are new (to me), some are old. The list includes radio stunts:

Radio stunts, like CA$H GRABS ("in which a viewer was led into a bank vault and allowed to scoop up dollar bills," sometimes cheered on by Hooters waitresses) were inserted into evening news broadcasts at member TV stations.

 And bonuses:

...the top level cronies of Zell and CEO Randy Michaels (he hired about twenty top managers from his former days as a radio manager and shock jock) received a total of $57.3 million in bonuses going into 2010. The previous year they only made $5.9 million in bonuses. 

There are 11 more, as you might have guessed.

Being good makes you a bad choice at Tribune

Another passage from David Carr's story about the Tribune Co. offers a glimpse into the company's future. It doesn't include experience, which taints the creative mind in the eyes of Tribune managers (and requires more compensation in the eyes of the Tribune accountants):

And management still is confident that the new thinking has Tribune on the right track. The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

“The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance,” the announcement read. And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

Randy Michaels denies Tribune-turned-frat house story

David Carr at the New York Times writes about a "rugged ride" at the bankrupted Tribune Co. under the management of owner Sam Zell and chief executive Randy Michaels. The story describes a frat-house executive suite that reined over a crumbling empire.

From the NYT story:

Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels, who was promoted to chief executive of the Tribune Company in December 2009, arrived with much fanfare, suggesting they were going to breathe innovation and reinvention into the conservative company. 

By all accounts, the reinvention did not go well. At a time when the media industry has struggled, the debt-ridden Tribune Company has done even worse. Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed. 

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

Michaels has pushed back against the story. In a memo posted by LA Observe, he says Carr dug up old, discredited allegations and describes the company culture as "creative" and "fun." From the Michaels memo:

Mr. Carr has made clear that he is digging up these old allegations because he believes that decisions about the company’s management are about to be made, and he wants to influence those decisions. Mr. Carr knows that an outside firm investigated the most substantial of these allegations, and that they were found to be without substance. Mr. Carr intends to use them anyway.

(Found via LA Observed)

Possible fraud in Tribune takeover, court examiner says

A court-appointed examiner in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case has concluded that "the company's 2007 leveraged buyout was 'marred' by the 'dishonesty and lack of candor' of its then-senior management and that the deal rendered the media conglomerate insolvent from the moment the two-step transaction closed," the Chicago Tribune reports.

In response, Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels issued a memo that asks all company employees to "stay focused" and to "try not to be distracted by the media attention it may receive."

The anchorless newscast and other imagineering

Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels has a vision for his bankrupt newspaper and television empire, and it looks a lot like the empires of MediaNews Group and Gannett - meaning a constant focus on findings ways to cut staff (centralizing and shrinking copy and news desks, sharing stories to fill pages or on-air time) and a nearly erotic attachment to the idea of consolidation.

Here are some key quotes from an interview Michaels did with the Wall Street Journal:

"Stories [are] laid out in modules — standard sizes with collections of headlines, content, images [reducing the need for layout and copy editors]. If you pick up the Allentown [Pa.] Morning Call, the foreign news was written in Los Angeles and the national news was written in either Chicago or Washington. It's probably higher quality journalism than a local paper that size is going to be able to afford."

"We are about to launch a TV newscast in Houston that has no anchors, that has great pictures and great writing, but doesn't involve a set or a desk or anyone standing in the way of the picture. Now is it going to work? We're going to find out."


"On the TV side, this is an industry ready to consolidate. I believe my experience in helping people look rationally at opportunities to grow their business by intelligently consolidating regionally will be very helpful."

Michaels to staff: We're cool

Last week, Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels admonished his radio staff not to use certain words and phrases on the air, and encouraged them to tattle on colleagues who broke the ban. When his memo outlining the new rules got leaked, he upbraided radio execs for running a sloppy ship.

To counter the bad publicity he sent out a second memo, obtained by Kevin Roderick at LA Observed, that says Tribune isn't really into "rules."

Here's a portion of the memo, in all its Baby Boomer guiltshame:

The point is...we don't have a lot of rules around here.

But, not everyone has gotten the message. We've heard from employees who say their business unit still has a strict dress code (we don't). Others have told us they can't hire someone because he or she might fail the new employee drug test (we don't drug test unless it's required by law or the person being hired is operating machinery, driving a truck, or handling a lot of cash). Some say they are afraid to speak up or present a wacky idea for fear of retaliation (nothing will squash creativity and innovation faster).

Roderick's post about the memo tells a slightly different story, at least when it comes to the Los Angeles Times, where top editors face retribution for exercising good judgment and standards continue to slip as the paper tries to cope with cutbacks.

Four in the morning

1. The Daily News looks at dismal results of a recent USC study of local television news and asks backers what they plan to do about it. DN

2. After someone leaked his 119 words and phrases that should be banned from radio, a cranky Tribune CEO Randy Michaels met with staff to show them his thin skin. Vocalo

3. The annual "State of the Media" report is out from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. Every media sector is losing money except for cable news. Pew

4. Fox News host Glenn Beck cries even during rehearsals. Howard Kurtz

The 119 words you can't say on (Tribune) radio

Randy Michaels is a list maker.

The CEO of Tribune Co. drew up a list of 119 words and phrases he never again wants to hear on the company's talk radio station, WGN-AM (720), and has asked staff to rat each other out if any of the banned "newsspeak" gets uttered on air.

The list is a mix of AP style and personal irritants. Most examples are perfectly reasonable, such as bans on the meaningless "going forward" and cliche "perfect storm." Some are oddities, such as banning "white stuff," which I assume is used to refer to snow. Then there are words that no one wants to use but are sometimes unavoidable, such as "reportedly" and "officials."

The whole list is here.

(found via Romenesko)

Michaels succeeds Zell

Amid speculation that Sam Zell could be pushed out of Tribune Co. as a result of last year's bankruptcy filing, the company's board of directors today announced that Randy Michaels will take over from Zell as chief executive officer of the company. Zell will continue on as chairman of the board.

Here's Zell's memo to staff:

Today we are announcing a transition in Tribune’s leadership. Acting upon my recommendation, the board of directors has appointed Randy CEO and has elected him to the board. I will continue as Tribune’s Chairman, providing strategic oversight and vision to the company’s management team.

During the last two years, we’ve achieved a seismic shift in Tribune’s focus and culture—we’re moving in the right direction and into the New Year with energy and optimism.

I have complete faith in Randy’s judgment and leadership. No one will work harder for Tribune. There is a great future ahead.

Sam

The news comes a day after the judge in Tribune's bankruptcy case agreed to give the company until Feb. 28 to complete a reorganization plan.

New publisher at Chicago Tribune

Tony Hunter takes over as publisher at the Chicago Tribune. The boss calls him a "change agent":

"Tony has spent his life in the publishing business and we still think he's the right guy for the job," Randy Michaels, Tribune Co. chief operating officer, said in a statement. "He understands the Trib and appreciates its history, but he's also a change agent, a creative leader who is eager to move the paper in a new direction so it can compete for more readers and advertisers."

(via Romenesko)

Depressing news

Tribune Co. execs Randy Michaels and Sam Zell answered questions from Tribune Co. reporters on a conference call Tuesday. I've posted the entire transcript here.

Below, Michaels responds to a question about cuts made to The Morning Call by comparing today's financial struggles to what newspapers went through in Great Depression:

And look, this is not without precedent. I just read that in 1929 after The Crash, the Colonel cut the Chicago's Tribune size, closed a lot of the foreign bureaus and cut the number of reporters in Chicago down to 83 in order to stay alive through the Depression. So this is hardly unprecedented, it's not the first time. But we're seeing revenue declines that start to approach those levels. And I think we're going to come nowhere near those kind of draconian cuts that had been made before to keep these papers alive.

Sam and Randy meet their press

Tribune reporters will have a chance to ask questions of Sam Zell and Randy Michaels this morning - or afternoon, depending on where you live.

The memo from Gary Weitman, senior vice president for corporate relations for Tribune Co., is below. I couldn't get the link to work, so maybe it's locked to non-Trib folks. Also, I don't know if his reference is to Tribune Co. reporters, or reporters from the Chicago Tribune.

As we move past the six-month mark as a private company, both Sam and Randy have gotten a lot of requests for interviews. They want to respond first to the requests from our own newspapers, so this afternoon Sam and Randy will take questions from Tribune reporters in a teleconference at 1 pm CT (2 pm ET, 11 am PT). The session will be on the record and employees can listen in by clicking on the link below:

http://www.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=fee902badf1605f2207caa49cc0665b1&portal_id=a05725b291960be196039fedb1597e6c

We'll archive the Q&A on TribLink afterward for anyone who can't tune in live. The archive will be available through Friday, Aug. 1. We'll also post a transcript late tomorrow.

Please listen in if you get the chance.

Gary Weitman
SVP/Corporate Relations