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The Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware on Monday. This media powerhouse owns 23 TV stations, 12 newspapers that include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Tribune owner and billionaire real estate investor, Samuel Zell, states in court documents that his company is nearly $13 Billion in debt with $7.6 billion in assets.
This comes at a time when bad news for the newspaper industry is the norm versus the exception. As advertising continues to drop and circulation continues to decline, newspapers are finding it harder to stay in business.
It comes to no surprise to the Marketing Pilgrim community that, one of the few areas in the newspaper industry that is showing significant gains is the transition to online media. By moving regular print media to the internet many companies are seeing expanded profits in new advertising models that can’t be replicated in their print counter parts.
If media companies want to continue to offer the news as a central product then they must begin to invest heavily in open online news distribution. Otherwise they can continue to watch everything shrink: advertising, subscribers, and profits.
