Thursday Afternoon Linkage

The other shoe drops in Chicago - Roger Black
WELL, THE GOOD news is that Tribune found a buyer. The bad news, for some anyway, is that the Chicago company still owns the Los Angeles Times. Sam Zell (Forbes No. 158), the real estate plutocrat who won the auction, says that he is only in it for the money, and will leave the journalism up to others.

Attrition has reduced the Rocky staff's size - Denver Westword
Ad revenue at many U.S. newspapers is sliding downhill faster than Jeremy Bloom at a freestyle skiing competition. For that reason, the Rocky Mountain News recently joined several major dailies from across the country, including the Boston Globe and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in offering buyouts intended to decrease their numbers.

Geffen and Zell will meet tomorrow night - LA Biz Observed
So much for unlikely heights. WSJ is reporting this afternoon that Geffen and Zell will meet tomorrow night about the LAT. The conversations are described as informal, but it'll no doubt rachet up the story.

Wow! That Zell/Trib ESOP Is Complicated - Nikki Finke
"But here is a key fact. There is no money from the pension plan going into the deal. It took us a while to really penetrate all the very ins and outs of this transaction to figure out what was really going on, so I can see how people could get misled."