TRIBUNE CO. LOSES ITS BIGGEST STARR

Tribune Co., which has parted ways with hundreds of reporters at its newspapers and television stations since Sam Zell’s takeover of the company in 2007, will be losing its most famous and most senior reporter of all. Brenda Starr, a comic-strip character who first appeared 70 years ago, is being dropped by Tribune Media Services after the comic’s

writer, Mary Schmich, and its artist, June Brigman, chose to discontinue working on the strip. Although Brenda Starr, the creation of the late Dale Messick, once appeared in hundreds of newspapers every day, the high cost of syndicated material has forced many struggling newspapers to abandon their comic pages altogether. Brenda Starr currently appears in only about 35 newspapers. Over the years, the character has dabbled in television, and in 1992 Brooke Shields starred in a dud of a movie titled Brenda Starr that had sat on its distributor’s shelf for three years before being released. Starr has not been immune to the turbulence in the news business. Last year, she was laid off at her newspaper, The Flash, by the paper’s owner, B. Babbitt Bottomline, whose son parks his motorcycle in the newsroom. Coincidentally (?), Sam Zell is a motorcycle enthusiast who rides with a group called The Zell’s Angels.