The Deal from Hell
How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers
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Narrated by:
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L. J. Ganser
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By:
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James O'Shea
About this listen
In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it owned the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive into bankruptcy and public scandal? In The Deal From Hell, veteran Tribune and Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to disaster in boardrooms and newsrooms from coast to coast, based on access to key players, court testimony, and sworn depositions.
The Deal from Hell is a riveting narrative that chronicles how news industry executives and editors - convinced they were acting in the best interests of their publications - made a series of flawed decisions that endangered journalistic credibility and drove the newspapers, already confronting a perfect storm of political, technological, economic, and social turmoil, to the brink of extinction.
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Editorial reviews
Be careful - this could happen to you. That's one of the central messages of former LA Times Editor James O'Shea's The Deal from Hell, which outlines how a bunch of intelligent, well-meaning industry professionals tanked what had, just 10 years prior, been a thriving American newspaper trade. O'Shea almost goes as far to suggest that if you're starting to hear the word "synergy" a lot in your office, you might want to think about a career change.
The "deal" initially referred to the bizarre take-over of Tribune Company by real estate cowboy Sam Zell, but more broadly came to refer to the merger of Tribune (The Chicago Tribune) and the LA-based Times Mirror (The LA Times). Using that deal as a prime example, the book tackles a wide range of problems that have befallen the newspaper industry in the last few decades. Through the lens of these specific mergers and acquisitions, we get a broad spectrum through which to view these problems in realistic ways.
On one level, The Deal From Hell is about all the problems in the modern American print journalism industry. First, the old newspaper families grow conflicted and unsure. Next, the bean-counters take over. Before we know it, management is demanding the demolition of the invisible wall between the business and editorial sides of a number of esteemed publications. Through it all, O'Shay guides us on a painful step-by-step process of what went wrong and how. Like watching a car crash in slow motion, we're given ample information at every turn to anticipate the arrival of all the most cringe-worthy moments.
On another, perhaps more significant level, this book is about how numbers-driven values are also eroding our world at large. At every turn, managers scheme to slice costs, fraudulently increase circulation numbers, and make cut after cut to the work force actively covering the news. Rome really starts burning with the arrival of the nutty Wall Street types, who ride in on a tide of big bank financing, office pinball machines, and sexual harassment suits. O'Shea subtly hints that it's not just the news at stake anymore, as our whole society becomes about profits and losses, zeros and ones.
The frank, honest narration of L.J. Ganser makes us feel as if we've been privy to the backroom wheelings and dealings of the business side, as well as the tense interactions of reporters on the newsroom floor. And, while The Deal from Hell might not be a comprehensive guide to the downfall of all western print journalism, it's definitely one hell of a story. —Gina Pensiero
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Performance
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How did InBev, a Belgian company controlled by Brazilians, take over one of America's most beloved brands after barely a whimper of a fight? With timing - and some unexpected help from powerful members of the Busch dynasty, the very family that had run the company for more than a century. From the very heart of America's heartland to the European continent to Brazil, Dethroning the King is the ultimate corporate caper and a fascinating case study that's both wide-reaching and profound.
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Good Story but Narration Can be Annoying
- By Ken on 10-21-11
By: Julie MacIntosh
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DisneyWar
- By: James B. Stewart
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 25 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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DisneyWar is an enthralling tale of one of America's most powerful media and entertainment companies, the people who control it, and those trying to overthrow them. It tells a story that - in its sudden twists, vivid, larger-than-life characters, and thrilling climax - might itself have been the subject of a Disney classic - except that it's all true.
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Really interesting story... No ending.
- By rotinaj on 12-18-17
By: James B. Stewart
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Mike Bloomberg
- Money, Power, Politics
- By: Joyce Purnick
- Narrated by: Mark Moseley
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Bloomberg is not only New York City's 108th mayor; he is a business genius and self-made billionaire. He has run the toughest city in America with an independence and show of ego that first brought him great success and eventually threatened it. Yet while Bloomberg is internationally known and admired, few people know the man behind the carefully crafted public persona.
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Not the most captivating, but a decent summary
- By liz w on 03-06-17
By: Joyce Purnick
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How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune
- The Billionaire Who Wasn't
- By: Conor O'Clery
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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In 1988 Forbes magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive. No one knew until then that he was extremely wealthy. Or was he? Born during the Depression in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Feeney had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. How he did it is one of the great untold retail stories of modern times. The greater untold story is that Feeney had in fact given away his fortune, in its totality, to endow Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the most generous and secretive philanthropic funds in the world.
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Horizons I never knew were there!
- By DTU_Garza on 08-13-17
By: Conor O'Clery
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The Oligarchs
- Wealth and Power in the New Russia
- By: David Hoffman
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for
The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.
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Supreme Chronicle of Murky Times
- By ivan on 03-01-14
By: David Hoffman
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The Firm
- The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business
- By: Duff McDonald
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Company, America's most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nation's leading financial journalists. In The Firm, Duff McDonald uncovers how these high-powered, high-priced business savants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological shifts. With unrivaled access to company documents and current and former employees, McDonald reveals the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private organization in America.
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Warning: Non consultants should avoid
- By R. Jaeger on 11-04-13
By: Duff McDonald
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The King of Content
- Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sumner Murray Redstone, once feared as the “mad genius” of media who would dump his CEOs for mere wobbles in his companies’ stock price, had built one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers constructed to ensure that he always maintained control. Today he controls 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion.
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Feels biased. Well researched, but not engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-19
By: Keach Hagey
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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Crash Course
- The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster
- By: Paul Ingrassia
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Crash Course, Ingrassia answers the big questions: Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers better than the American companies themselves? Ingrassia also describes dysfunctional corporate cultures (even as GM's market share plunged, the company continued business as usual) and Detroit's perverse system of "inverse layoffs" (which allowed union members to invoke seniority to avoid work).
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Contemporary History at Its Best
- By Roy on 04-19-10
By: Paul Ingrassia
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Conspiracy of Fools
- A True Story
- By: Kurt Eichenwald
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 30 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Say the name 'Enron' and most people believe they've heard all about the story that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. But in the hands of Kurt Eichenwald, the players we think we know and the business practices we think have been exposed are transformed into entirely new, and entirely gripping, material.
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Great Story
- By Adam M Pokorski on 06-06-06
By: Kurt Eichenwald
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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The Zeroes
- My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane
- By: Randall Lane
- Narrated by: Randall Lane
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Magazine entrepreneur Randall Lane had a prime seat at Wall Street's biggest greed fest. The Zeroes is a memoir about the excesses and bad behavior of an outsider who got pulled into a crazy, self-contained world.
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A very entertaining tale
- By andy on 11-03-13
By: Randall Lane
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The Hellhound of Wall Street
- How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance
- By: Michael Perino
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....
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Great Story
- By Lynn on 03-22-11
By: Michael Perino
What listeners say about The Deal from Hell
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-15-18
Great Listen
This is a great listen! The level of deal detail is great. The pictures painted of the people involved is worth hearing about all by itself!
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- Tim
- 04-18-13
Old Media
When I think about the newspaper, I always assume as old media, but most of the population in the world get their news on print. I am writing this a few days after the bombing in Boston. Ironically, the next day after the tragedy, I saw more people reading this headline on print, instead of viewing it on a glowing tiny screens.
Maybe the newspaper should only print the paper when something major happens in our society. Most day to day news are just fluff pieces that is just taking up space. Do we have to know last night's sports scores, outdated stock quotes, the weather, or Lindsay Lohan. How is this news worthy?
I can't remember when I bought the newspaper. You actually have to go out of your way to buy the paper and pay for a subscription and having to deal with the physical paper is just dumb. It's not worth my time to recycle the paper.
"The Deal from Hell" is a good read. I actually learned a lot for listening to James O'Shea's experience at running the newspaper. The newspaper is an old boys club, where ink on paper is becoming a dinosaur.
I just hope that a Postmaster will write a book on the Post Office and see how they have no business and where 100% of the mail that they deliver is just SPAM.
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- Lynn
- 09-18-11
A Sad Tale
Look around the country and there is no doubt that America’s newspapers have been in a state of decline for sometime. James O’Shea, however, tells the story of this state of affairs from the perspective of a top editor. In The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers, he relates how owners such as Sam Zell, Lee Abrams and Randy Michaels drove their papers into the ground. Along the way, he opens the curtains on what took place behind the scenes. This story will not be of interest to everyone, but will be informative to all who read it. O’Shea covers some old ground, but the review places this story in context. He spends a large amount of time on details which are tangential to the story, but extends the reader’s understanding and adds a great deal of color. Anyone interested in the decline of newpapers in the US and in media in general in that context will be rewarded by reading this book. The reading of L J Ganser is excellent.
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- Harbinger of books
- 10-18-11
The truth about the decline in newspaper
James O’Shea attempts to paint a picture on how the media has been transformed due to big business. I think he gives a face to what most of us already know. Personally I still recall how the white house leaked a story to a journalist.. then the journalist wrote the story …then the white house said the story was credible due to the news article – yep that type of circle represents what we seem to be losing, oh and if you are looking for that tale it is not in this book.
I found the book to have a good flow and it was well done. There were parts where I wished he went into more detail, like after the initial press room cuts what happened to reporters do they go somewhere else change careers? Are those that are left forced to write more? The tale Mr. O’Shea tells about how the Tribune Company started to fall in part due to the loss of advertising revenue and in part to the mismanagement of the paper itself. The book leaves one to wonder in times like these where we so desperately need unbiased news media if not papers who will fill that role?
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