Opinion: The Tribune-Chandler Showdown....
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The L.A. Times has found itself increasingly in the headlines this week. First came the news that local luminaries such as Eli Broad, Peter Ueberroth and Ron Burkle may be interested in buying the Times.
Former Times staffer Ken Reich, proprietor of the Take Back the Times blog, was, not surprisingly, elated:
A restoration of the L.A. Times to home ownership would be a boon to California as a whole and, naturally, to the beleaguered Times staff.
Mick Stockinger of Uncorrelated was a bit more skeptical:
While the LA Times represents considerable political influence to an activist owner, the mentioned buyers are prmarily known as investors. Either they have a plan, or they’ve been seduced by the glamor of owning a legendary franchise.
Then came news of a boardroom fued between Tribune executives and the Chandler family, which owns 12% of the Times‘s parent company. The Chandlers are loudly lobbying Tribune to split its television and newsprint assets. Tribune Co. fired back by denouncing the paper’s former owners.
Brady Westwater calls this ‘The Time Warner & AOL merger of jounralism’:
A lot of ink has been spilled about the vanishing of stockholder value when Time Warner merged with AOL - but exactly the same thing appears to have happened in the Tribune’s purchase of the LA Times
Reich thinks this is just posturing by the Chandlers to force a sale:
The skillful Chandler maneuvering being advised and possibly led by Tom Unterman could lead to a consensus board decision to change position and put the Times, or maybe the whole company, up for sale.
The American Journalism Review‘s Rem Rieder, however, faults the Chandlers:
Well, there’s no doubt Trib’s performance has been disappointing. All those dreams of riches beyond belief stemming from its ballyhooed synergy strategy have failed to materialize. The idea of owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market turned out to be not so much the magic bullet. [...] But that being said, it’s pretty tacky for these Chandlers to raise this kind of ruckus, and not just because it was their decision to cash out for $8 billion.