On April 3, 2007, Sam Zell was triumphant. The headline in the WSJ was "Zell Wins Tribune In Bid to Revive A Media Empire", and the story was accompanied by a dot portrait of a happy, smiling grave-dancer.
Today, the headline is gruesome: "Tribune Prepares for Bankruptcy Filing". And even Zell’s dot portrait seems to have got the memo, despite the fact that most of the shares in the company are actually owned by Tribune’s employee stock ownership program, rather than Zell himself.
First Pandit, now Zell — can’t we find anyone willing to smile for the WSJ any more? Yes we can!
