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Zell Takes Over Tribune, Closing $8.2 Billion Buyout

Billionaire investor Sam Zell completed the $8.2 billion buyout of Tribune Co., ending the newspaper publisher’s 24 years as a publicly traded company.Zell becomes chief executive officer and chairman, taking on about $12 billion in debt as advertising revenue from the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune declines. The purchase follows an industrywide plunge in stock prices as well as Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of Dow Jones & Co. this month and McClatchy Co.’s takeover of Knight Ridder Inc. last year.

“The whole newspaper industry has realized that the world is changing around them,” said James Goss, an analyst with Barrington Research in Chicago. `It’s clear that the changes are more dramatic than anybody was really envisioning and the business model revamp is going to be much greater than people were thinking.”

Consumers and advertisers have abandoned newspapers and broadcast television networks in favor of Web sites and cable channels. Tribune, the second-biggest U.S. newspaper publisher after Gannett Co., lost more than two-thirds of its market value in three years before saying in September 2006 that it would consider a sale.

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