At one of the Post’s quasi-blogs, Harold Meyerson has some more on our good friend Mr. Zell.

From TPM Reader PK …

I would be surprised if any of your readers who chastised you for second-guessing the business decisions of some of the newspaper companies that are now hanging on for dear life are in the newspaper business — at least on the editorial side of it.

I got into the newspaper business as a reporter in 1985, which now is known as the year when newspaper circulation in the United States peaked. It quickly became evident to me that the profit margins that companies like Gannett and Thomson, which has since exited the newspaper business, were unsustainable at any papers other than small ones. Unfortunately, it didn’t become evident to many other people. Gannett moved into owning larger newspapers and gutted them to achieve the 20-percent-plus margins it was getting from its smaller papers, and other newspaper owners followed suit. When circulations stated declining, paper owners cut more costs to maintain their margins. That made their papers worse, driving away more readers, they responded by cutting more costs, and the race to the bottom was on.

Throughout all this, I kept thinking that some newspaper owners eventually would realize that the problem was the high margins they were demanding of their properties and would accept lower ones from them. If they did, they did so too late. In the last round of newspaper purchases, the buyers not only expected unreasonable margins of the papers they were buying, they took out loans based on their expectations. You’re seeing the result. The question now is what major U.S. city will become the first to not have a large daily newspaper. My bet’s on Miami.

From TPM Reader JS on the Tribune meltdown …

Longtime admirer and reader here, finally moved to comment on the fiasco that is the company I work for. You are right on the money, this filing goes directly to insanely bad business decisions, not the secular decline in newspapers. The amazing thing that is happening right now is that all of the company’s assets are in the black. All of them. Every television station and newspaper is making money. Now lets not kid ourselves — many are in a fast downhill spiral, revenues are declining, etc. But what has killed this company is the insane amount of debt Zell has placed upon it.

That debt was not incurred to invest in the company’s product, or even physical plant. It was incurred solely to buy out Tribune Corp’s shareholders at an inflated share price and let Zell have his toy. It was the epitome of the bubble. And now it’s caught up with Zell. He’ll be fine. The employees are the ones who will suffer, as always. Basically, Zell has destroyed several great newspapers as part of an unwitting wealth transfer to various large Tribune shareholders.

If you choose to post anything from this, I ask that you keep my identity out of it — not a good time for the plebians here to be saying bad things about the emperor.

I’m not sure I’d put it with quite the same edge. But I think Jane Hamsher’s right about this. Appointing Caroline Kennedy to serve out Hillary’s senate term is just a bad idea. This isn’t to say anything bad about her. I don’t have anything bad to say about. I think very highly of her. But that’s not reason enough to appoint her to serve in the senate.

A few readers have chastised me for second-guessing the business decisions of some of newspaper companies that are now in the worst shape. I take the point, in as much as that the current, acute crisis has a lot of do with debt servicing, which has been massively impacted by the extent of the economic crisis and which is a area of financial machinations which I don’t pretend to know a great deal about. But I cannot help thinking that the situation the Tribune finds itself in has a lot to do with some really questionable decisions by Samuel Zell. NYT’s Deal Book blog puts together some pretty choice quotes from Zell over the last year which makes for rich reading in the light of today’s events. Still seems to me like Zell massively indebted a company that already had some pretty serious existing problems. This wasn’t ten years ago, but about a year ago, when there were already real signs of a serious economic slowdown that would seriously impact the parts of the economy newspapers depend on for advertising. Of course, this was in addition to the major difficulties facing newspapers in general, because of the Internet. Sure, few people realized a year ago that we’d find ourselves in the midst of a historic financial crisis. But it seems like he did a lot to make his boat unseaworthy before he hit what he’s now calling this perfect financial storm.

Reps. Nadler (D) and Delahunt (D) say Maher Arar, the Canadian national shipped to Syria to be tortured, deserves justice in US courts too.

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Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand talks to TPM Election Central about the big reaction to his Huffington Post column calling on the left to hold its fire on Obama’s cabinet picks.