Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Deal from Hell: A Cautionary Tale Every Publisher Should Read

Publishing Perspectives
A universally important book, The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers by James O’Shea shows the ease with which moneymen incur debt and ruin companies.
Mr. James O’Shea’s beguiling admixture, the eyewitness-cum-memoirist, combined with his Pulitzer-laden editorial pedigree makes for jaw-dropping vignettes, hilarious asides and harrowing portraits of pinstriped idiocy. But is The Deal from Hell important? Hell, yes. Every citizen in the republic — and every C-suite publishing executive — should hear what this book has to say, if only to discover how desperately besieged is our fount of Public Discourse.


Nutshell: Mr. O’Shea tells how he came to know and love reporting and how, for a time, he came to edit the daily news in Chicago and Los Angeles. He tells how men with little knowledge of and no love for reporting and editing the daily news came to run and then wreck one of the largest news and entertainment media conglomerates in the United States — Tribune Company. From inside its newsrooms, Mr. O’Shea shows and tells how it felt and what it looked like as Tribune Company cashed in its billion dollar head start in Internet technology to chase a siren called “synergy,” borrowed its way into the biggest tax dodge in history (U.S. Tax Court Docket No. 17443-02) and then proceeded to borrow its way into the biggest media bankruptcy in history (U.S. Bankruptcy Court Docket No. 08-13141).


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