Sam Zell: Business Genius or Boss From Hell?

Implications: Cutting costs and calling the old bosses stupid won't be enough to turn the Tribune Company around.  If Sam Zell doesn't have answers for the company's problems, who does?

Analysis: Sam Zell’s tour of Tribune Company offices is fun to watch on YouTube – but hell to sit through if you’re a Tribune employee.

In fact, if you sit through a lot of the video clips that have been posted online you can learn quite a lot about Sam Zell:

1. He’s “a business man, not a newspaper guy.”
2. He thinks the old managers at Tribune Company were a bunch of losers.
3. He likes to swear a lot.*
4. He’s rich and he’ll still be rich even if his Tribune experiment fails.
5. He’s all for puppies on the front page if they sell papers.
6  He doesn’t want reporters thinking about Pulitzers when they should be thinking about revenues.

(* It’s interesting to note that Chicago Tribune readers have to be protected from the kind of language that Zell directs routinely to Tribune employees.  One seven-minute video clip from Zell’s employee roadshow posted to the Chicago Tribune website was bleeped NINE times.)

So how well is Zell doing at motivating his 19,000 employees?

In a sign that Zell’s act is more troubling than inspiring, the LA Times bureau chief called his recent visit a “suicide bombing.”

And Bloomberg quotes one 25-year LA Times veteran who sums it up: "Zell makes a lot of noise but he hasn't articulated the new model other than saying we're doing it wrong."

Revenue and cashflow are continuing to decline. Hundreds of employees are being laid off.  And Bloomberg also notes that “Tribune bonds due in 2015 are trading at 40 cents on the dollar.”

Clearly, turning Tribune around – and motivating a workforce of 19,000 employees -- will require a lot less profanity and a lot more vision.