Tribune's bankruptcy exit could mean company breakup

When Tribune Company exits bankruptcy under new owners next year, its flagship newspaper is likely to go on the sales block, but that's not all. A host of other Chicago assets in the Tribune media empire, from WGN Radio to Chicago magazine to the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower itself, could be offered to buyers who have circled the properties for years.

Any sale of Chicago assets could further loosen Tribune's ties to a city that has been home since 1847, following the move last year of its CEO post to Los Angeles and the coming ownership shift to East Coast financial firms. It also would restart the dismantling—paused after the 2009 sale of the Cubs—of a $7 billion media company cobbled together during the previous three decades. The three largest new Tribune owners will be investment firms Oaktree Capital Group LLC of Los Angeles and Angelo Gordon & Co. of New York, as well as New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. Oaktree will hold the biggest stake, at 22 percent. Because the fortunes of the newspaper and broadcast industries have diverged so much in recent years, with print losing to online competition, most industry professionals expect Tribune to sell its newspaper assets, including the Los Angeles Times, separately from the broadcast properties, such as WGN-TV/Channel 9 in Chicago and WPIX-TV in New York. The value of Tribune's broadcast operations rose during the past year, while the newspapers' value dropped, according to Tribune bankruptcy documents.