Compared to Tribune's previous dense and lawyer-vetted employee manual, Zell's handbook is a haiku."Rule #1: Use your best judgment," it begins. "Rule #2: See Rule 1."
Bloggers in and out of the newspaper industry particularly liked this excerpt from section seven: "7.1. If you use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated. See Rule 1. Coming to work drunk is bad judgment."
But after Jim O'Shea's firing at the Los Angeles Times, the handbook -- crafted by Zell's longtime associate Randy Michaels, now Tribune's CEO for interactive and broadcasting -- suddenly doesn't seem like such a laugh riot any more.
It smells like the same old hypocrisy of a corporation that preaches values -- but really values a by-the-book, finances-first, mission-second approach to business.
Parts of the handbook lay out the new "Tribune's Core Values" that bravely encourages its so-called "employee owners" to "Question Authority:"
Here's that value: "In transforming Tribune, you are encouraged to ask your manager, supervisor, business unit head or anyone in Corporate, any question you have regarding the business. Question authority and push back if you do not like the answer. You will earn respect, and not get into trouble for asking tough questions. Remember, you are an employee owner. You have the right and obligation to ask questions."
Even the dullest "employee owner" at any Tribune property around the nation will see what happened when Jim O'Shea questioned authority, and conclude that asking tough questions and pushing back won't really earn the respect of the boss. It'll just speed your way out the door.
O'Shea's graceful parting memo to the newsroom underscores that his firing was not really about whether $4 million -- less than 4% of its budget -- should be cut from the newsroom, but a vision for getting out of the newspaper industry crisis with a Los Angeles Times worthy of its hard-won legacy.
It was a classic tough question that you might think Sam Zell -- the jeans-wearing, Ducati motorcycle-riding, cussword-dropping supposed polar opposite of the corporate stuffed shirt -- would be posing inside Tribune Tower.
And O'Shea might have even hoped the tough questions would have been received well there. After all, Zell has been telling the media and Tribune newsrooms that he believes in growing out of this downturn, and not downsizing even more.
Instead Zell backs his good soldier, Publisher David Hiller, and even kind of lets himself off the hook since the company is "decentralizing" and all. The firing even becomes, in Tribune's party line, somehow a resignation.
So perhaps Tribune should take some of the punch lines from its new handbook, and put them on those schmaltzy "motivational" posters with eagles and sunrises over mountains and rock climbers. You know, the kind of poster prominently displayed in places that, in reality, are white-collar sweatshops.
And might I suggest a tagline for each of these posters, a plain-spoken nugget of wisdom out of the literary school of Zell & Co.?
"Don't believe everything you read."
(This column has been corrected. Everybody -- but this columnist apparently -- knows that Sam Zell most often rides the Italian-made Ducati, not a Harley Davidson.)