Tribune Co. CEO speaks
The Wall Street Journal interviews the newish CEO of the Tribune Co., Randy Michaels. The bankrupt Tribune is parent, of course, to the Call.
[Michaels] is also looking for revenue boosts in unconventional places, such as renting out part of Tribune’s headquarters for the filming of a “Transformers” movie for more than $200,000.
Good luck with that. Perhaps gimmicky band-aids like a rent-a-headquarters are explained by Michaels’ previous career:
As a radio personality before becoming an executive at Clear Channel and elsewhere, Mr. Michaels was known for colorful on-air stunts, including faking a frog being pureed in a blender.
The Call makes it into the interview. Amid a flurry of softballs, the WSJ asks Michaels why he has combined foreign and national news production.
Mr. Michaels: 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.
What I’d like from the Call is high quality local news. Given its skeleton staff, a handful of Call reporters do an often heroic job. That’s in spite of Tribune Co. and the Call leadership, not because of it.
Michaels should take that money he’s saved laying out national news in Washington and plow it into local reporting.
