Tribune Holdout From L.A. Times Sale Finally Comes Out of Hiding.
The good old days when everyone was talking and reading about the LA Times – Cover of “Billion Dollar Blackjack”
When the Tribune boys sold the L.A. Times to one of its shareholders, Patrick Soon-Shiong, there were a lot of goodies left out of the deal. Remembering back to that time and the chaos surrounding the events, it’s a wonder things didn’t get really berserk. Here’s some memories:
Tribune had changed its name of the Times group to Tronc. Oh God, what a field day we all had making fun of that lunacy. The worst corporate re-name in history.
The Times was losing dough, and beset by union problems, staff bailing out, pension buy-outs and financial troubles.
The Tribune guys were ex-medical business guys, fat with cash from a sale to IBM. They dumped the Times and San Diego Union on one of their shareholders, another really wealthy medical business guy. Did any of this group even have a paper route when they were kids? Don’t think so.
What didn’t Mr. Soon-Shiong get? No real estate. The Times iconic HQ was sold to some Canadians. The property where the papers were printed had been sold in 2010. And the biggest sleeper of all, LA.com, which the Troncs had purchased for a reported million dollars, was held back. The buyer got the Times for $500 million, but it was the newspapers only.
For 500 million (roughly the debt that the Times had accumulated) he should have asked for LA.com to be thrown in the deal. A missed opportunity.
The Tribune/Tronc boys had put up a landing page, but did nothing with the digital property. Now it is for sale for $5 Million. Is it worth it?
Well, let’s see. It is the greatest two letter name for one of the greatest cities in the world. Forget about the recent lunatics who temporarily occupy the government. They will eventually be gone, along with the miles of homeless camps, nut cakes and dopers who now occupy the streets. A new regime of competent business guys with common sense will solve the problems, really help out the homeless, put the criminals into rehab or jail and get the city back on track. So yes, the price for the .com is fair. The sale is being handled by MediaOptions.com, one of the great domain brokers.
One more word about the price. In Santa Monica real estate developers are buying up houses for 2 million, tearing them down, and building mega-mansions for sale at 10 million So the greatest dot com that you could ever get for Los Angeles could easily be worth 10-15 million right now. The price of a new mc-mansion.
Will Patrick Soon-Shiong step up and buy this? The Times moved its HQ to El Segundo, a pleasant beach area town. It is so lame that it is now referred to as The El Segundo Times. It is pathetic. Money comes in from Red China every week as a complete propaganda section of several pages to prop up the advertising. The paper is a shadow of its former self of the 1970s when it had great foreign correspondents around the globe.
The only way out of this mess is for Mr. Soon-Shiong to buy LA.com and turn it into the major, dynamic website of the City. Get rid of the agit-prop crew that writes the current nonsense and hire some writers and editors from the New York tabs. Get the Paparazzi on the payroll. Blow the City wide open. The corruption, the celebs, the lunacy, is all there, waiting to be featured on LA.com. Put the Times back in the center of the action.
And one more thing. Don’t wait too long, there’s plenty of aggressive dudes waiting in the wings looking for adoration on the way to immortality. And maybe one of them even had a paper route back in the day.