Randy Michaels, Chief Executive of the Tribune Company, is trying to steer the company out of bankruptcy so he can help remake it, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Michaels, who has been the CEO of the 163-year-old media company for seven months, is trying to rethink the ailing conglomerate.
In 2007, the company went private, but this did not go as well as the company had hoped. Instead, less than two years later, in December of 2008, the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
So far, Michaels has rethought several of the practices that he believes led to the company’s troubles. He is reducing duplications in news reporting, for example. This would mean that the smaller papers owned by the Tribune Company would use national and foreign articles, rather than writing their own, to save costs.
He also rented out part of the Tribune’s Chicago headquarters to film part of the new Transformers movie—a move that gave the company more than $200,000. The company has expectations to finish up the bankruptcy proceedings later this summer.
In the Journal article, Michaels gave his opinion on several portions of the business.
For example, Michaels believes that having printing plants in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach, Florida, is too much. The company, to be successful, needs to have less infrastructure.
Michaels also believes that motivating the employees is important to making the Tribune Company successful again. When an employee in Florida found a way to save a couple million dollars for the company, the company turned around and gave the man a $25,000 check. And you can bet that the picture of the happy employee was, with his check, was distributed to other employees.
Michaels doesn’t believe the thought that newspaper advertising is in a death spiral either. He was quoted stating that the company is “going to do a couple billion dollars in newspaper advertising this year. It’s still the number one place people advertise. It’s just [that] costs went up at a time when margins were very high.”
When it comes to the touchy subject of completely canceling print newspaper delivery, Michaels was leaving nothing off the table. Michaels said that “we will stop printing if and when it’s no longer economically viable. Today, at every one of our papers, it’s not even close. Our smallest paper makes north of $10 million [a year]. Our largest paper makes north of $100 million.”
Clearly, Michaels is making changes and open to new ones. With the trouble that so many media outlets have been going through, it is refreshing to see one with a CEO who is willing to take some chances and one that will remain open to radical ideas that can save the company.
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