Doing Business in Real Time
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The global economy has a life of its own, it lives in real-time, and we are all part of it. Hello brave new world.
Homeboy Buys Chicago Tribune, Wants Agility
A Chicago entrepreneur who calls himself the "Grave Dancer" just bought a world-class newspaper and television company that’s in serious trouble and is struggling to find its way in our Internet world. The entrepreneur is Sam Zell and the media company is the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Cubs, the LA Times and other newspapers, plus radio and TV stations across
The Tribune Company is a scary case in point for how fast traditional businesses are changing now. For years the Internet and Web 2.0 technology has been eating away at market share and revenue of traditional media like newspapers, TV, and radio, but suddenly in the last 12 months this trend has accelerated. The Tribune’s readership, profits, and stock price are falling; they are losing revenue from traditional print and TV faster than they are making it up from new Internet media. They either figure out how to turn that around or they will go out of business in the next several years. Sounds like a great time for people to get agile and reinvent themselves.
Sam Zell has made billions of dollars (Forbes magazine figures he’s worth about $5 billion) by being a contrarian. Now he buys a conservative old media company in financial distress with falling revenue and circulation numbers even though everyone says the Internet and Web 2.0 interactive media are the new growth markets. When asked why he did this he replied, “I don’t really believe in conventional wisdom. In fact, going against the conventional wisdom usually produces a positive result” (Agile thinking here…)
Some bloggers and financial analysts think Sam is doing the wrong thing. They say he is loading up the company with $8 billion more in debt to finance the deal and he is selling the money making parts like the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. They say he knows nothing about media and just wants to perpetuate the old paper media tradition. Others say his moves are nothing more than “financial engineering”.
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