Going down to the bottom — Time Inc. begins its "overhaul" of 600 employees with some actual overhaul of their marketing department. Meanwhile over in Sam Zell's world, the Tribune Co. posted a loss of $128 million for the third quarter, as opposed to a year ago when it had a net income of $152 million.

Sam Zell's Tribune Company may start distributing The Wall Street Journal in metro areas, because it's not already enough of a giant clusterfuck over in the newspaper industry now that we need Rupert Murdoch's Journal being thrown at your door by the same guys who bring you theLA Times.

And what is Zell doing taking on this deal, which is still in "trial runs" with the local teamsters running the trucks? Didn't we just hear about how the man can't even afford his own baseball team, and now he's getting into some weird MGM/Weinstein-esque arrangement with another media baron?

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Who says you can't have it all? Sam Zell, that crazy/eccentric/crazy billionaire from Chicago that bought up the Tribune Company, including LA Times and Chicago Tribune, also owns the Chicago Cubs. Hopefully he treats his staff at the baseball field a little bit better than his employees at the paper, who were all trying to sue him before the industry went to shit.

But Zellmania is not catching, apparently, and when the hobbitish Illinoisan tried to cash in on some of the Barack fever by finding a buyer for 95% of the Cubs (everyone except James Harden), he was met by cold feet and a lot of hedging. So now Zell is trying to backtrack and only sell 50% of the team.

Sure, whatever. Because everyone is going to want to share ownership with one of the most well-known crazies.

It's not surprising that the Washington Post is endorsing Barack Obama this election. What is surprising is the time frame they decided to do it in: only half an hour after The Chicago Tribune came out with their own endorsement for the candidate, and four hours after the Tribune's sister paper, the LA Times, came out with a similar editorial.

For both the Tribune and Times, it marked the first time the papers have supported a Democratic nominee for the White House. The WP, a little less so, they've historically gone left. But the question remains: why the domino effect of endorsements on a Friday afternoon, after the morning/week's copies have already come out?

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The editors at the L.A. Times have come out in support Barack Obama, a little late in the game but it's all good. Especially since this is the first time in the paper's 120+ years in the business to endorse a Democrat for the office. Cramazing!

Looks like Sam Zell and co. haven't quite run the paper into the ground yet:

Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

Update: Chicago Tribune just came out with their own endorsement of Obama, which is their first Democratic nominee as well. Trend, or is it just because LA Times and Chicago are owned by the same Zell?

Ever since Sam Zell took over the LA Times, mutiny's been in the air. First, those pesky staffers filed a lawsuit against their employer, who they claim is a huckster who is bilking the company out of millions, tax-free. Now, the new editor in charge, Eddy Hartenstein, is calling it treason for his staff to talk to blogs or other media sources. Because if there is one thing a newspaper shouldn't stand for, it is the truth from legitimate sources!

More crazy Yakov Smirnoff/ Orwellianisms from a LA Times watchdog blog after the jump:

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Sam Zell is currently in a tug-of-war with his employees over at the LA Times and Tribune. The maligned writers filed a lawsuit against Zell for scamming the company out of millions of dollars, while the gnomely huckster fired back with internal memos about partnership, while calling the lawsuits "frivolous and unnecessary." All per the norm finger-pointing that occurs when businesses fail.

But now the game's stepped up 2 the streets, with the plaintiffs making Zell out to be a monster in a letter to the press that highlights Zell's crappy music taste:

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While the class action lawsuit against billionaire and LA Times owner Sam Zell rages on, the staffers who decided to slap their bylines on the court docs should just thank their lucky stars that they have an employer left to rage against. Even if he is a scam artist that is bilking the company for millions in a (admittedly genius) tax exploitation manoeuvre, at least he offered a corporate bailout when no one else was biting. Yes, this is a case of "best of the worst," but while Zell may be fleecing the Tribune Co., he's still signing paychecks. Some newspaper companies aren't that lucky.

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Yesterday "current and former employees of the Los Angeles Times and the Tribune Company filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Sam Zell, a Chicago billionaire real-estate speculator who in December 2007 took control of the Tribune Company in a controversial deal that has mired the company in more than $13 billion of debt. … As current and former members of the Employee Stock Option Plan that owns 100% of the Tribune Company and participants in various Tribune retirement plans, the plaintiffs filed this action alleging it is time to call the Zell-orchestrated acquisition what it really is: A scam.

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The masochists at the Hartford Courant served themselves a cake with Sam Zell's face on it, in some weird ritual designed to let staffers ingest part of their spirit leader. Or for the chance to poke his eyes out, voodoo doll style. [Romenesko]

One hundred fifty of the Los Angeles Times Media Group's 250 total job cuts will happen at the namesake paper, with more than one-sixth of the staff being shown the door. And the newspaper will trim its pages by 15 percent, resulting in an even thinner newspaper. This is a much larger bloodletting than execs previously let on; a few months back they were only expected about 50 positions to be lost. Then Sam Zell's blood sugar dropped, and he got much more vicious. [NYT]

"As the company prepares to shed more reporters, it has measured writers' performances by the number of column inches of stories they ground out. It found, said one Zell executive, that the number of pages per reporter at one of Zell's smaller papers, The Hartford Courant (about 300), greatly exceeded that at the Times (about 50). As one of the handful of major national papers, however, the Times employs the kind of investigative and expert beat reporters not found at most smaller papers. I could name a number of Times writers who laboured for months on stories that went on to win Pulitzers and other prizes, and whose column-inch production, accordingly, was relatively light. Doing so, I fear, would only put their necks on Zell's chopping block." [The Age]

Scott Smith, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, told staffers in a memo that he would step down, after 30 years with Tribune Co. Not so surprisingly, Smith alluded to differences with Tribune owner Sam Zell as the reason for his departure. Said "differences" likely include Smith's want to keep his staff intact, while Zell's plan is to "right-size" the operation. [CS-T]

Sam Zell, who continues to ruin all that remains good and honest with the beleaguered newspaper industry – a list that includes just the comics page, and those Best Buy circulars, at this point – is taking out one more strand of fishing wire and tying it around the neck of the Los Angeles Times, one of the Tribune Co.'s flagship newspapers that Zell has taken a liking for abusing. Rather than letting the editorial team there, led by editor Russ Stanton, operate the paper's Sunday magazine as it always has, Zell sneakily hired an entire new staff for the weekly LAT Magazine without telling anyone. And that staff, it turns out, is part of the business side of the newspaper, not the editorial unit.

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It's not like Sam Zell ever promised to keep anyone around at the Los Angeles Times. He's got billions in debt he needs to keep stable, which means he's got a couple plans up his sleeve. Obvious first choice: job cuts. Except Zell calls this down-sizing "right-sizing," because, based on his calculations that the average LAT journo produces the equivalent of 51 pages a year, while competitors in Hartford and Baltimore spit out 300 pages, the current staff overload is just waste. And so all of this will bring into focus his other big task, which is evening out the editorial:advertising ratio to 1:1, which will also allow him to shrink the actual size of the paper and the number of pages printed per year. And finally, Zell has taken to addressing his thousands of employees as "partners," if only because the future of the Times, and its debt load, depend on their stock-option plan.

Sam Zell names Randy Michaels, the former broadcasting and interactive divisions chief, as COO of Tribune Co., putting him in charge of the company's newspapers. [LAT]

In case the paparazzization of the Associated Press didn't have you worried about one of the world's most ubiquitous news services, perhaps its new hires will. Sam Zell and Rupert Murdoch are both joining the AP's board, it was announced today at a meeting where chairman William Dean Singleton mixed up "Osama" with "Obama."

The duo have been elected to three year terms, which is more than enough time for Rupert to BlackBerry Messenger Sam underneath the board room table with tips about how to swindle David Geffen into buying the Los Angeles Times.

That, or to chuckle about the New York Press' Wall Street Journal parody.

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Is David Geffen making a third try for the Los Angeles Times? Nikki Finke's gossips say yes, though Geffen has been yachting in the South Pacific for a few weeks, and it's possible he never had those super secret talks with Sam Zell that have been reported. [DHD]

"Another freaking Clear Channel Communications executive on the payroll and this one's been named President of Tribune Interactive," announces a press release from Sam Zell's Tribune Co. . And it gets ZANIER from there!

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It's been a full two weeks since Chicago Tribune intern Katie Hamilton won the Chicago Sun-Times "Zell No!" music video challenge — and she hasn't been paid the $1,000 prize yet. Naturally, the combative Sam Zell-owned Tribune will be watching its clock tick until the cheque arrives.

Meanwhile, raise your hand if you've ever had to wait more than 14 days to be paid for your freelance work.