MEDIA GIANT LOOKS TO REAL ESTATE AS ITS SAVIOR

The media giant Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Newsday, and some smaller papers, is experiencing a major slump in its business. They correctly guessed that their outdated practices and slow reacting management would lead them to losses, but only predicted losses of 2 to 3 percent. Instead their losses are approaching 20 percent. When Tribune's chief executive, Zell, who has been reliving the sixties out riding his motorcylce or listening to Born to be Wild, was asked about the situation, he responded "I don't know. . The news business is something worse than horrible. . .This is not an easy task. ". While the savvy and educated public has been moving further and further away from the slow reporting of the printed media and looking more and more to real time information such as the internet, Tribune is having trouble getting out of the nineties. For reasons not disclosed, Tribune has several real estate holdings, which may be their savior as they restructure their company into a more modern and efficient organization. After years of publishing negative stories about the real estate market, it seems as if the company has actually been following just the exact opposite of its reporting. To stay in business, the organization will be selling several of it real estate holdings. Referring to one of the company's holdings, Zell said "That land on the bay is worth a lot."

Information provided by the Baltimore Sun.