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The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers
by
James O'Shea
In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it comprised the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive into bankruptcy and public scandal? In The Deal From Hell, veteran Tribune and Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to disaster in boardrooms and newsr...more
Hardcover, 416 pages
Published
June 28th 2011
by PublicAffairs
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Two deals, actually, are described in O'Shea's book. One is the Tribune Company's purchase of the Times Mirror company, which made the Los Angeles Times the Chicago Tribune troubled siblings, and the other was the purchase of the Tribune by uberfinancier Sam Zell. O'Shea does a magnificent job of detailing both deals and their aftereffects. O'Shea shifts his narrative pace for each deal. The LA Times fiasco takes on a jack-rabbity stop-and-go feel as O'Shea talks of the caprices of the Chandler...more
Boy, this stuff sounds familiar. Not because I was following the trials and Tribuneilations of the newspaper business over the last few years -- I wasn't paying that much attention -- but because so much of it sounds like what has gone around me for the last year or so. This is a great example of what happens when metrics fail to meet vision.
O'Shea tries to make a case that the "moguls and Wall Street" destroyed the newspaper business over the last decade. I'm not sure he succeeds, though he doe...more
O'Shea tries to make a case that the "moguls and Wall Street" destroyed the newspaper business over the last decade. I'm not sure he succeeds, though he doe...more
The Deal From Hell by James O’Shea is about the changes of journalism. The truth is that news media is changing and it is in trouble. People rely on honest journalism not a quick by-line but actual journalism where someone has researched a story and found evidence and support then that journalist will retell the tale so everyone can understand and be informed. Instead our world is becoming increasingly full of sound bites and quick articles from the wire.
James O’Shea attempts to paint a picture...more
James O’Shea attempts to paint a picture...more
Have you ever read a really scary book before bedtime and then been unable to sleep with the lights off? As an employee of the LA Times, this fits the bill for me. I'm not going to say it's an accurate book. I honestly couldn't say. I find it easier to do my job if I don't get emotionally embroiled in things I have no power to change, but it was certainly compelling.
The author is open about the fact that the book has a bias to it and it sometimes reads like a bit of a humble-brag, but he does a...more
The author is open about the fact that the book has a bias to it and it sometimes reads like a bit of a humble-brag, but he does a...more
If you lived within the orbit of Tribune Co. or the L.A. Times within the last decade, this book will be interesting to you. It's a quick read with a number of fine anecdotes. That means it's mostly inside baseball, so if you're looking for great insights into the fate of journalism in the (sadly likely) post-newspaper age, you'll want to look elsewhere. O'Shea throws in a handful of mea culpas but little reflection on how the narrow hard-news definition of journalism he espouses might be a cont...more
O'Shea may think he's written a book about how profit-driven, ego-centric people ruined some of the nation's largest papers, but that's because his own biases are at work here.
Actually what this book does is paint a picture of why it's hard to run a newspaper as a for-profit business with the goal of constantly increasing revenue.
He belittles the bosses that want to print the stories "people want" involving celebraties and gossip rather than important news of conflict, politics, and holding go...more
Actually what this book does is paint a picture of why it's hard to run a newspaper as a for-profit business with the goal of constantly increasing revenue.
He belittles the bosses that want to print the stories "people want" involving celebraties and gossip rather than important news of conflict, politics, and holding go...more
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Compelling story about the purchase of Times Mirror (LA Times) by the Tribute Company (Chicago Tribune) and then the purchase of the new entity by Sam Zell.
It is also a story of print journalism and the challenges facing the newspaper industry.
This book was part memoir, part history, part reporting, a mix that worked quite well. It paints a really depressing and concerning picture, a completely appropriate for me to have read at this moment.
It is also a story of print journalism and the challenges facing the newspaper industry.
This book was part memoir, part history, part reporting, a mix that worked quite well. It paints a really depressing and concerning picture, a completely appropriate for me to have read at this moment.
Well-reported albeit biased insider look at the current state of print journalism and how it got here. Very easy to read. Recommended for journalism buffs.
Journalism is dying. This guy is kind of self-obsessed.
Powerful, almost heartbreaking, chronicle of the decline of a once-great urban newspaper at the hands of profiteers with little or no journalistic experience or appreciation for time-honored journalistic ideals.
Kinda wish there was more there about the deal itself, and about how Tribune was brought to bankruptcy under the weight of its own debt. But then he wasn't really there for that either.
Fascinating. Interesting account of how things happened mixed with some general news media observations.
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