Dysfunctional Train Wreck at Tribune Publishing Rolls On

Newspaper companies have a hard enough time even when their management isn’t deluded or in turmoil. Print advertising revenue continues to free fall, and growth in digital revenue is failing to make up the difference. Which has to make things at the Tribune Publishing chain even harder than they would otherwise be. It can’t seem to manage some of its own major papers, and yet it won’t let them manage themselves either.

In the latest iteration of this ongoing soap opera, executives at two of Tribune’s newspapers in California—the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune—told the New York Times that they were directed by Tribune head office to revise their financial numbers to make them more negative.