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Summarized by Kent Larsen
Tribune Purchase Of Times-Mirror Leaves LDS CEO Rich But Tainted
Businessweek 14Mar00 B2
By Ronald Grover in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- The $6.5 billion purchase of Times Mirror,
parent of the Los Angeles Times by the Chicago-based Tribune Co.,
parent of the Chicago Tribune, leaves Times Mirror CEO Mark Willes, a
member of the LDS Church and nephew of President Gordon B. Hinckley,
without a job after five years of trying to change the way the Times
is run. Willes leaves Times Mirror a multimillionaire, if he wasn't
before, with his stock alone valued at more than $46 million. But the
deal also leaves Willes somewhat tainted, both because of his
controversial attempts to break down the 'chinese wall' between the
editorial and business sides of the newspaper publishing business and
because he failed to meet his goal of raising the circulation of the
Times by 500,000 or 1 million subscribers and increase revenue.
Initially, Willes did have a significant effect on the Times, raising
its stock price from a low of $18 a share to as high as $75 a share,
mainly through cutting staff and closing some operations. But these
efforts led Willes, who came to the Times with no experience in
publishing after a career at cereal giant General Mills, to be called
"Captain Crunch" and "The Cereal Killer." His moves were
controversial as he shut down Times Mirror's New York City edition of
its Long Island-based Newsday and closed the beloved but
money-loosing Baltimore Evening Sun.
But after these efforts raised the stock price, it stalled as Willes'
efforts to raise circulation failed to make significant headway. Then
last year the Times under Willes leadership signed a controversial
deal with Los Angeles' new Staples Center sports arena in which the
newspaper focused on the arena in an issue of its Sunday magazine,
sharing the $2 million in revenue from the issue with the Staples
Center. Times staffers and former publisher Otis Chandler, a member
of the Chandler family that controls Times Mirror, raised an outcry
that the deal compromised the newspaper's editorial integrity, saying
that with such a deal in place, readers couldn't depend on the
newspaper's objectivity in covering the center.
The deal was evidently the last straw for the Chandler family, which
had seen the stock price of Times mirror dip from $56 a share last
year to below $50 a share recently. The Chandler family was also
upset that Willes had sold the Sporting News to Microsoft billionaire
Paul Allen and was unhappy with how slowly Willes was in getting the
Times Mirror's newspapers onto the Internet.
So the Chandlers sold Times Mirror from under its CEO, Willes, who
was surprised when he learned of the deal just two weeks ago. Willes
had understood that the company couldn't be sold under a provision of
the Chandler Trust, which owned a significant portion of the family's
assets.
See also:
Of Mergers, Chinese Walls and Captain Crunch
Time Daily 13Mar00 B2
By Michael Eskenazi
The L.A. Times sells itself. In doing so, its controlling family finds a neat way out of a sticky situation
Times Mirror sale means end of era for 'cereal killer' CEO
B2 Boston Globe (AP) 14Mar00 B2
By Tom Verdin; Associated Press
'Cereal Killer' Willes Knocked Out Of The Box
New York NY Post 14Mar00 B2
By Keith J. Kelly
Times-Mirror Kin
New York NY Post 14Mar00 B2
By Keith J. Kelly
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