Sam Zell in a conference call to Tribune journalists:
“We’re looking at some of the worst advertising numbers in the history of the world.
I have a responsibility to keep this business alive when cash flow has eroded at a prodigious level.
We went through every one of our organizations with a goal of getting efficient numbers up and head counts down so we can survive to live another day.”
…
“It is very clear …the role of the newspaper is changing and we need to size our organization, and our newspapers to reflect the realities of the marketplace.”
Zell said six months ago:
“I do not believe that anybody can grow a business by reducing the number of employees”
But as the revenue has fallen by about 20%, far more than the 5-7% in his business plan, he says now:
“I don’t believe it’s fair to hold me to the sentence that I expressed six months ago.
I don’t know that anybody has a frame of reference on advertising revenue destruction that, in effect, is as bad as this, going all the way back to the Depression.
So I think the circumstances are dramatically worse than anyone could have possibly predicted.”
(Picture by The New York Times)
