Hightower Lowdown

The Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, South Florida's Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, 23 television stations, cable station WGN, and the Chicago Cubs, was bought last year by a Chicago real estate baron named Sam Zell.

Sam didn't have anywhere near enough money to pay the $8.2 billion purchase price, but, hey, that's no problem for a striver. Zell simply got the company's CEO to let him use the employees' pension fund as collateral for bank loans to buy the Tribune Company. The employees had no say in the deal, nor in how their company was run, and it was run badly. Facing an intolerable debt load--$900 million just in interest payments in 2009, for example -- Zell tried slashing newsroom staff and substituting marketing for journalism. That didn't work, and now, less than a year after Zell's takeover, the Tribune Company is bankrupt, and employees are likely to lose jobs, severance payments, and pensions.

And those who pulled off this heist? The former CEO got more than $40 million, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch got about $36 million each for being "advisors" on the deal, and another Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, got $7.5 million just for writing an "opinion" that Zell's use of the pension fund was "fair."

And Zell? He had put up less than 4% of the purchase price to get control of the company, and while he might lose some of that, he cut the deal so he will be first in line to get his money back--before the employees whose company and pensions he wrecked.

In a just world, Sam Zell would not be in bankruptcy court--he'd be on trial for grand theft.