The newspaper trade group earlier had heard a dire forecast from Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Ginocchio, who said the near-term prospects for their industry were nothing short of "scary."
Revenue and earnings growth, Ginocchio said, were years away.
To Zell, it simply was a matter of fighting harder for market share.
-
- Bio | E-mail | Blog | Recent columns
-
-
Tribune Tower
"The newspaper industry has stood there and watched while other media enterprises have taken our bacon and run with it," he said, comparing the situation to Nero fiddling while Rome burned and making it clear he intended to light a fire under his new acquisition.
Zell said he saw "little or no chance" for a recession in 2008, but he again noted the likelihood of "the equivalent of a recession" early in the year after that. This prompted a question about why he was taking on "a 10-times leveraged" enterprise in Tribune Co.
"I guess I don't view it as a 10-times leveraged newspaper company," Zell said. "I view it as 60 different entities, each with an opportunity to get lucky."
That sounds, in retrospect, less like a business plan than a rationale for playing the lottery.
Always the optimist, he didn't realize that what he actually was lighting on fire was a fuse.
Twitter @phil_rosenthal
