Meyerson on Zell’s ‘Visigoth’ effect
In one of what is sure to be many commentaries on Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell’s planned personnel and content cuts for his 12 newspapers, the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson compares the real estate mogul’s influence on Los Angeles – home of the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times – to that of the Bloods, Crips, and Mexican mafia.
However, if PR professionals are wondering how the newspaper landscape will change if major metropolitan dailies enact production-based cuts, Meyerson makes a good point about Tribune’s column-inch-centric method of deciding.
If the [Washington] Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who spent months uncovering the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and whose reporting not only won a Pulitzer but caused a shake-up in the Army’s treatment of wounded veterans, had been subjected to the Zellometer productivity index, they’d be prime candidates for termination.
