Dallas Morning News and Providence Journal publisher AH Belo Corp is getting some online representation. David Morgan,  who worked at Time Warner’s AOL between September 2007 and February 2008, is joining the Dallas-based company’s board, the Morning News reported on Thursday.

Morgan was founder of Tacoda and Real Media. See Buzzmachine proprietor Jeff Jarvis’s short, complimentary writeup about Morgan here .

Also joining is John Puerner, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, whose territory butts up against Belo’s Press-Enterprise daily newspaper in Riverside County, California.

Mr. Puerner, 56, a private investor, spent most of his career with Tribune Co. He was publisher, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times from April 2000, shortly after Tribune agreed to acquire it, until May 2005, when he retired from Tribune.

And here’s the simple, if somewhat vague reasoning:

“Their backgrounds in both print and Internet media will add crucial insights to the board’s deliberations,” said J. McDonald Williams, lead director of A.H. Belo.

Belo, which recently split from the larger Belo Corp (which remains a television broadcasting company), is yet one more U.S. newspaper company trying to manage the downturn that papers have been going through as print advertisers chase the readers who are leaving newspapers in favor of getting their news online.

When Rupert Murdoch said the other day that he wasn’t investing in newspapers anymore, we assumed that he was being ironic, especially as it came in the same telephone conference call with News Corp analysts and reporters in which he said that he thought his agreement to buy Newsday from Tribune Co was all but sewn up .

That goes to show you what they say about assuming things.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday , and we subsequently confirmed , that News Corp isn’t going to chase Newsday after all. Instead, it’s pulling its $580 million bid, paving the way for Cablevision to likely take over its fellow Long Island media outlet. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman is in the race still as far as we know, but it’s hard to see how Tribune will take his $580 million bid when Cablevision has a $70 million sweetener on top of that.

Why? Apparently the economics were unjustifiable. What could that mean? The short list: Tribune’s quarterly financial results, which came out late Friday, show the company continuing to lose advertising revenue at its newspapers; media ownership laws might make it tough for Murdoch to take the paper yet keep his New York-area television broadcast licenses; and finally, a bid higher than $650 million is already a higher valuation for a newspaper than most sensible financial folks see as feasible.

That didn’t seem to bother Murdoch before. Here’s what he said on the News Corp earnings call (reproduced from our earlier blog entry ):

No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail. Just be patient for a couple of days (inaudible). We’re certainly not in the business of getting into an auction here …

We’re hoping to wrap it up within the next week. And I don’t mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days … It takes two to agree. But we’re at a pretty advanced stage. I’ll just leave it at that at the moment.

Here’s what he subsequently said at the Time 100 dinner later that week, according to the New York Observer (whose owner Jared Kushner also was interested in bidding, though a source close to Kushner Properties told us recently that he has no idea what he wants to do about a bid right now — we’re guessing nothing):

“Yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty,” he told The Observer. “I was telling the truth, but you don’t know until …”

Until Saturday.

Tribune Co under Chief Executive Sam Zell has really loosened up in the past few weeks. Just think back to the April 1 Web site “redesign,” not to mention this subsequent so-crazy-it-was-surreal press release.

It’s all part of Zell’s goal of getting folks at the debt-riddled company not to take themselves too seriously, but someone forgot to tell the lawyers. Check out excerpts from the press release issued on Wednesday:

CHICAGO, April 23, 2008-Tribune Company today announced that Don Liebentritt has been named general counsel and that David Eldersveld, the company’s senior counsel/mergers and acquisitions, has been promoted to vice president/deputy general counsel and corporate secretary. Crane Kenney, who has served as Tribune’s general counsel since 1996, will step down to devote all his time to his duties as chairman of the Chicago Cubs.

Liebentritt is a senior advisor with Equity Group Investments (EGI), a private investment firm where he served as president from 2000 to 2005. He is also an officer and director of various private affiliates of EGI. Liebentritt will be responsible for directing all of the company’s legal affairs and will assume his new duties in mid-May.

Eldersveld, who joined Tribune in 2005, has been responsible for negotiating and managing the legal aspects of acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and other strategic investment transactions for Tribune and its business units. He will assume his new responsibilities immediately.

Where is the funny?

(Photo: Reuters)

Tribune Co earned the scorn of its smoking employees when it decided to charge them $100 more than their non-smoking brethren for health insurance. That was before Sam Zell took over, however. Here’s the memo that went out to employees today.

Since the closing of the going-private transaction last December, we’ve been reviewing policies and practices across the company, including Tribune’s healthcare benefits. While well-intentioned, we think the tobacco-use fee implemented by the previous management team is inconsistent with the new culture we’re developing-we’d rather you use your own judgment when it comes to tobacco use, not impose ours upon you.

This policy was a part of open enrollment last fall and took effect January 1, 2008. I’m pleased to tell you that we’re eliminating this fee effective April 28th.

· If you successfully participated in the smoking cessation program, have quit and been reimbursed for all fees, then congratulations are in order. Quitting is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

· If you’re still being charged the fee, it will stop and Tribune will reimburse you 100 percent for the fees you have paid. This reimbursement will occur in late May.

Tribune will continue to offer the smoking cessation program free of charge to all employees and their covered dependents age 18 and older.

The spousal medical fee, implemented at the same time, will remain in place. We believe that if an employee’s spouse has access to coverage through his/her employer, that employer has the primary responsibility to bear the cost of coverage. Our obligation is to take care of our own employees, first and foremost.

If you have questions about the tobacco use fee, contact the Tribune Benefits Service Center at 800/872-2222.

Thanks.

Gerry

Like Sam said, it’s your company , so light up.

(Photo: Reuters)

Tribune Co and Chief Executive Sam Zell got a few laughs out of an otherwise gloomy newspaper business on April Fool’s Day with its faux press release about renaming the company. But why wait for next year to take another stab at comedy? Tribune’s latest press release about the appointment of a new interactive chief, released on Monday, launches itself into a whole new galaxy of silly.

This is the full text of the official press release we received:

SURELY YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS?
MARC CHASE - PRESIDENT OF TRIBUNE INTERACTIVE!
Randy Michaels’ run of acquiring radio-management stars came to a screeching halt today with Chase’s appointment
CHICAGO, April 7, 2008 - Another freaking Clear Channel Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been named President of Tribune Interactive.

Tribune Broadcasting’s Randy Michaels’ past finally caught up with him when Marc Chase obviously blackmailed his way into a position he is not remotely qualified to hold. Insiders are irate. Chase is a fraud. A source inside Tribune HR, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out that Marc Chase’s resume (below) was obviously fabricated.

First of all, his name isn’t even Marc Chase–it’s Mark Thompson. The whole thing is a sham.

MARC CHASE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500 202-456-1111

PROFESSINAL EXPERIENCE
Vocabulary Advisorist for George W. Bush
Washington DC, 2004-present
President of the United States of America

eBay
San Jose, California 2003-2004
President of Buying Crap

Google
Mountain View, California 2001-2002
Executive Vice President of Finding Crap Anywhere

Microsoft
Seattle, Washington, 2000-2001
Senior Executive Vice President of Technology and Stuff

CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX Television
Los Angeles, California 1999-2000
Vice President of Watching TV A Lot

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998
Dean of School of Internetology

EDUCASHION
Nearly Graduated with Honers
School of Alabama in Atlanta Georgia 1985

COMMUNITY SERVICE
400 Hours (reduced from 600)
Judge gave time off for good behavior

Page 2
Chase was quoted as saying, “Timing and infrared photography are everything. I couldn’t be happier! I know Randy is relieved to finally have me on Sam’s payroll.”

Tribune has undergone major changes in the past year, with billionaire Sam Zell acquiring the company last April in a complex deal that left it with $13 billion in debt.

Since then, Zell has brought in new executives to fill key roles. This one takes the cake. Last December, Zell hired Michaels — who helped Zell to build Clear Channel into a radio behemoth that he could then sell — to oversee Tribune’s broadcast and Internet divisions. It is obvious Michaels has lost his mind with this hire.

–By Hugh Jass - A Reputable Media Source

© 2008, Bogus Information, a division of Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe. All Rights
Reserved.

###

TRIBUNE is America’s largest employee-owned media company, operating businesses in publishing, interactive and broadcasting. In publishing, Tribune’s leading daily newspapers include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.), The Sun (Baltimore), South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant. The company’s broadcasting group operates 23 television stations, Superstation WGN on national cable, Chicago’s WGN-AM and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

Popular news and information websites complement Tribune’s print and broadcast properties and extend the company’s nationwide audience. The company is also becoming known for its sense of humor and for not taking itself or the industries in which it operates too seriously.

(Photo: Reuters)

Sam Zell has a new round of ideas for how to fix Tribune. Read on for details. (Check Tribune’s temporarily redesigned Web site too, and remember: if you give people puppies, you can pay for Iraq coverage.)

CHICAGO, April 1, 2008-Tribune Company, the largest employee-owned media company in the nation, today announced it has changed its name to ZellCoMediaEnterprises Inc. or ZCMEINC. Zell, who made a fortune in real estate before deciding he’d like to dabble in an industry completely unfamiliar to him, announced the change in his record-setting 437th email to exhausted employees this year.

“H—, I put $315 million into this thing, and we’re on the hook for $13 billion-the least I ought to get is my name on the company’s stationery,” said Zell, who remains chairman and CEO of the newly named enterprise.

The company also announced a series of revenue-generating efforts, including a newly signed $600 million deal to rename historic Tribune Tower in Chicago. The new name of the landmark building will be unveiled at a ceremony held outside its Michigan Avenue entrance at noon today. Zell is expected to attend.

“While everyone was wringing their hands and worrying about renaming Wrigley Field, I went out and got a great company to put its product’s name right over the main entrance to this great building,” said Zell. “Finally we’ll have the money to renovate the place and put in a heating and cooling system that doesn’t date back to the days of Colonel McCormick.”

Just to remind employees of how important it is that the company increase revenue in order to meet its considerable debt payments, the company has installed debt-o-meters at each of its business units and on the company web site, www.tribune.com.

The company, which publishes nine daily newspapers in some of the country’s top markets, also unveiled plans to go completely paperless, using edible ink and a newly designed licorice printing system.

“Now our newspapers can be put to good use for something other than news, information, and lining bird cages,” said Randy Michaels, executive vice president of the company’s broadcasting and internet divisions, who’s also fooling around with newspapers. “Although I’m told it’s a little dry, a family of four will be able to get a week’s worth of nourishment off the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune.”

Additional revenue-generating initiatives can be found on the company’s web site, www.tribune.com.

Sam Zell in his latest memo tells Tribune employees — the ones who haven’t been spiked — that he’s happy to see them so hard at work coming up with new ideas to help the publisher and broadcaster thrive. Employees have been so helpful, in fact, that Tribune has created an online “IdeaBank” for submissions, rather than the talktoSam AT tribune.com address that he’s been using. As he explains below, this will let other people in the company see them.

By the way, participation is expected, Zell says. Now get to work.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the best ideas for this company will come from you, and we’ve seen a number of these innovations come to life in the past 60 days, including: a new morning show in Hartford, a free newspaper targeting young adults in Baltimore, a new national news section in Newport News, and spadia ads in Orlando and South Florida. We need to test a lot of ideas; we recognize that some won’t work. But, we’ll never find the ones that do work, unless we try them.
To open up this idea exchange across the company, we are launching an online IdeaBank, accessible via TribLink.
Going forward, I’d like you to direct your ideas to our IdeaBank, rather than sending them to talktoSam@tribune.com. This will enable others across the county to see them. I will still read and respond to all of the ideas that are submitted, and I still encourage you to e-mail me directly with comments and questions.
The IdeaBank has a crowd-sourcing element, so you can tag ideas you think are particularly good. You can also sort ideas by categories, and we’ll feature the top Revenue-Generating ideas, as determined by their popularity, on the front page of the site. We’re placing special emphasis on revenue-generating ideas because, as you know, that is our current focus. (One reminder: Ideas should cost significantly less than the revenue they produce.)
Most importantly, I want to convey that this is not some lighthearted initiative. I expect you to participate. Make deposits. Make withdrawals. Review the ideas to determine how you might adapt them to your business unit. And, managers, by reviewing and analyzing these ideas, you dramatically increase the probability of their viability.
So, be prolific. The future of our company is literally in your hands.
Sam

(Photo: Reuters)

Tribune Co.’s new owner, billionaire and orator nonpareil Sam Zell, let Chicago Tribune intern Katie Hamilton know exactly what he thought about her recent prank on rival paper the Chicago Sun-Times — one that has produced its fair share of chatter in the Windy City.

Hamilton and her colleagues submitted a music video that they sent to the Sun-Times, which offered a cash prize to whomever could produce the best video protesting Zell’s plan to sell the naming rights to the city’s historic Wrigley Field.

Here’s the memo that Zell sent to Tribune employees and that we got hold of:

Partners,

I returned from out of the country this weekend to learn that one of our employees had entered a video in the Sun-Times contest designed to protest a name change of Wrigley Field.

Needless to say, I was shocked! Appalled! The video was a blatant disregard for Tribune Company policy. It demonstrated a glaring disrespect for your chairman and CEO. (I’m much better looking, clearly more agile, and I think whoever played me was singing off key.)

So, I immediately referred to the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not take oneself too seriously. And, then I shared the video with my family and friends.

Here’s the link if you didn’t catch it: http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-suntim es-song-contest,0,1932877.htmlstory

It’s most definitely worth the watch, and it was a deft grab of the ball away from that other paper. What was their name again?

Maybe he’s laughing to keep from crying.