More Sam Zell damage control

From: McManus, Doyle
Sent: Thu 2/28/2008 2:07 PM
Subject: David Hiller & Russ Stanton

Friends,

David Hiller and Russ Stanton will be here next week for the annual Gridiron dinner, and they are setting aside extra time to meet with us on the future of the bureau.

We haven't confirmed times and dates, but we will probably have a breakfast with one or both of them next Friday. John Arthur, Scott Kraft, Davan Maharaj and Meredith Artley of latimes.com are also expected to be here.

Meanwhile, David asked me to relay this message:

"I am extremely proud of what you and our colleagues do every day. Having an excellent national report coming out of Washington is extremely important to our readers in Los Angeles. In addition, we provide most of the DC stories used by other Tribune papers, as intended by the design and staffing of the bureaus when the current arrangement was set up.

"Times and business realities have changed dramatically for all of us. We need to look at everything we are doing, and how we do it. We are literally in a fight for the financial viability of our great news enterprise. This will involve how we make coverage decisions across all areas, including how we collaborate with other papers.

"Given the state of the business, and the uncertainty the prospect of these changes creates for our team, we need to get to decisions fast. We also need to do it in a way that we continue to field a team of exceptional reporters and editors."

Thanks, as always
Doyle

SOURCE: Kevin Roderick