TRIBUNE CREDITORS TO SUE ZELL

Just hours ahead of a Wednesday deadline, Tribune Co. lenders plan to file a lawsuit today (Tuesday) against Sam Zell, the real estate mogul who engineered the $11.7 billion leveraged buyout of Tribune in April 2007, the New York Post reported today. The newspaper said that lawyers for the lenders will accuse Zell, who put only $315 million of his own money into the kitty to buy the media conglomerate, of taking on so much debt that its eventual insolvency was inescapable. Meanwhile, the Post observed, with cutbacks at Tribune-owned WPIX-TV in New York accelerating, morale has plummeted. “There’s a whiff of desperation in the newsroom,” a WPIX employee told the newspaper.