Bears general manager: 'We need to consistently be in the playoffs'

A day after the Chicago Bears fired head coach Lovie Smith, general manager Phil Emery explained his decision to the media at Halas Hall.

As soon as the news conference was over, Emery was expected to kick the search for Smith’s replacement into high gear.

"It was a tough day in many ways," Emery said of Smith's firing Monday. "It was a tough decision. Lovie had a good run here with good, competitive teams."

Emery said the firing wasn't totally decided until Monday morning when he sat down and told Smith directly. He said missing the playoffs for the fifth time in six years and the team's struggles on offense were the key factors in his decision.

"The end result was we didn't have enough consistecy," Emery said. "We need to consistently be in the playoffs competing for championships.

"We haven't had the balance, we have not had consistency on the offensive side of the ball. We have gone through a number of coordinators."

Emery said he discussed his decision with team chairman George McCaskey and president Ted Phillips but was given the authority to make the call.

Emery said he will handle the initial coaching interviews by himself and that McCaskey and Phillips will be involved on finalists' interviews. Emery said he would be looking at all levels -- former head coaches, current coordinators, college coaches -- for potential candidates. He said being an NFL head coach was a "24/7 job."

"I want somebody with high energy," Emery said. "Someone who pulls together everyone in the building."

Emery said working well with the media and presenting a good public image also were important factors.

"I want this person to stand up and represent us well," he said.

Emery said he would conduct the search "with a sense of urgency," but "we have to be thorough."

He said "the (ongoing) playoffs are a consideration ... there may be a candidate who is in the playoffs and we may have to wait on that."

Emery said money was not a consideration in firing Smith with a year left on his deal and won't be in deciding on candidates, declining to rule out big-name hires.

"We want to win now," Emery said. "We want that championship now."

Emery said he wants an adaptable coach who can find ways to win with the players on hand, speaking both of quarterback Jay Cutler and also about the defense in terms of using a 4-3 or a 3-4 scheme.

"It's real important to find the person to make things fit with the players we have," Emery said.

Emery said he considered Cutler a "franchise quarterback" that the team needs to "build around," but as to whether he is the long-term solution, he said, "That answer is going to come as we move forward with the new head coach."

"Jay has won a lot of games," Emery said. "We need to build around him."

Read More..

ESPN’s Hannah Storm returns 3 weeks after accident

NEW YORK (AP) — ESPN anchor Hannah Storm returns to the air New Year’s Day, exactly three weeks after she was seriously burned in a propane gas grill accident at her home.

Storm suffered second-degree burns on her chest and hands, and first-degree burns to her face and neck. She lost her eyebrows and eyelashes, and roughly half her hair.

Storm will host ABC’s telecast of the 2013 Rose Parade on Tuesday. Her left hand will be bandaged and she said viewers might notice a difference in her hair texture where extensions have been added.

“I’m a little nervous about things I used to take for granted,” she said by phone this weekend from Pasadena, Calif. “Little things like putting on makeup and even turning pages on my script.”

The award-winning sportscaster and producer was preparing dinner outside her home in Connecticut on the night of Dec. 11 when she noticed the flame on the grill had gone out. She turned off the gas and when she reignited it “there was an explosion and a wall of fire came at me.”

“It was like you see in a movie, it happened in a split-second,” she said. “A neighbor said he thought a tree had fallen through the roof, it was that loud. It blew the doors off the grill.”

With her left hand, she tore off her burning shirt. She tried to use another part of her shirt to extinguish the flames that engulfed her head and chest, while yelling for help. Her 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, called 911 and a computer technician who was working in the house grabbed some ice as Storm tried to cool the burns.

Soon, police and rescue teams arrived at the house. Storm’s husband, NBC sportscaster Dan Hicks, also had returned home with another of the couple’s three daughters. As her mother was being treated, the younger Hannah calmly said something that, days later, her mom could laugh about.

“OK, Mommy, I’m going to do my homework now,” she said.

Storm was taken by ambulance to the Trauma and Burn Center at Westchester Medical Center and was treated for 24 hours.

“I didn’t see my face until the next day and you wonder how it’s going to look,” she said. “I was pretty shocked. But my overarching thought was I’ve covered events with military members who have been through a lot worse than me, and they’ve come through. I kept thinking, ‘I can do this. I’m fortunate.’”

Other than going to Christmas Eve Mass, Storm hadn’t been outside until her trip to California. ESPN reworked its anchor schedule while she was recovering, and NBC and the Golf Channel rearranged their staffing while Hicks attended to his wife.

Storm is set to host her fifth Rose Parade, with some changes. She’s left-handed, and taking notes is almost impossible. Dressing and showering are challenges, too.

Storm said that long before her accident, she’d been inspired by Iraq War veteran, actor and “Dancing With the Stars” winner J.R. Martinez, the grand marshal at last year’s parade. He was severely burned in a land mine accident while serving overseas.

One attraction of this year’s parade that she was eager to see — the Nurses’ Float, and she hoped to use that moment on air to thank everyone who had taken care of her.

Storm wants to anchor “SportsCenter” in Bristol, Conn., next Sunday. After that, the Notre Dame alum is ready to go in person to watch the No. 1 Irish play Alabama in the national championship game at Miami. She said the school reached out after hearing about her injuries and had been very supportive.

“More than anything, I feel gratitude,” she said. “Something like this really makes you appreciate everything you have, even the chance to wake up on New Year’s Day and do your job.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: ESPN’s Hannah Storm returns 3 weeks after accident
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

Read More..

Tough decisions await new Tribune Co. board

When the new seven-member Tribune Co. board officially convenes for the first time in the next few weeks, the group of media and entertainment executives will name the company's executive officers. Then comes the bigger job of assessing a diverse portfolio of broadcasting and publishing assets, with an eye toward maximizing the value of the Chicago-based media company.

Whether that means buying, selling or keeping the company intact is a story that will begin to unfold in 2013. But insiders say the new owners — senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management; Angelo, Gordon & Co.; and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — won't be in a rush to make those decisions after a contentious four-year journey through Chapter 11 bankruptcy left the reorganized company in strong financial shape.

"We're really looking forward to the opportunities and the possibilities with this asset base, with over $11 billion in debt removed from the balance sheet," said Ken Liang, a managing director at Oaktree and a member of the new board.

Tribune Co. plunged into bankruptcy in December 2008, saddled with $13 billion in debt from real estate investor Sam Zell's heavily leveraged buyout one year earlier. It emerged from bankruptcy Monday, relatively debt-free and generating cash.

The company owns 23 television stations, including WGN-Ch. 9; national cable channel WGN America; eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune; and other media assets, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing.

Tribune Co.'s biggest challenge has been declining revenue and cash flow as the advertisers that sustained it through the years defected to digital media alternatives. But 2012 was a slight improvement, likely boosted in part by election year ad spending in the company's broadcasting unit.

Data released Monday by the company showed that after several years of revenue declines, including a 3 percent drop to $3.1 billion in 2011, sales for the first three quarters of 2012 were flat at $2.3 billion compared with the same period a year earlier. Cash flow was even better: After dropping 12 percent in 2011 to about $370 million, cash flow increased 17 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, to $240 million.

Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree is the largest equity owner, with 23 percent of the company. All of Oaktree's distressed-debt holdings have a 10-year investment window, though the average is three or four years, executives said. That time frame usually includes an operating phase, which is where Tribune Co. now stands.

Some experts expect that phase to be relatively brief.

"I think they are temporary owners," said Marshall Sonenshine, chairman of New York banking firm Sonenshine Partners and a professor at Columbia University Business School. "They're not really there to be long-term shareholders of media assets."

While eventually selling the assets is part of Oaktree's distressed-debt investment strategy, it doesn't preclude a longer run, including strengthening the company through strategic acquisitions, Liang said. And with Tribune Co.'s balance sheet cleaned up, the timing of any asset sales will be at their discretion.

The new board also includes Tribune Co. CEO Eddy Hartenstein; Ross Levinsohn, who recently left as interim chief executive of Yahoo Inc.; Craig Jacobson, an entertainment lawyer; Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co. and Caesars Entertainment; Bruce Karsh, Oaktree's president; and Peter Liguori, a former top television executive at Fox and Discovery, who is expected to be named CEO of Tribune Co.

The makeup of the board and the expected choice of Liguori as CEO suggests that broadcasting will be the operational focus for Tribune Co., according to insiders and media analysts. Priorities are expected to include developing WGN America, which lags cable networks such as FX and TBS in revenue, ratings and cash flow, analysts said.

"It's clear that, in a sense, we have a new Tribune media company, and it's going in a direction that many people thought it would be going," said media analyst Ken Doctor. "It makes the company entertainment leaning versus news leaning."

Meanwhile, in the face of digital competition and sagging industry revenue, Tribune Co.'s newspaper holdings have declined to $623 million in total value, according to financial adviser Lazard. While some analysts expect the newspapers to be bundled and delivered to an assortment of potential new owners — everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Warren Buffett has expressed interest in acquiring one or more of the nameplates — they are still profitable and may remain in the Tribune Co. fold for some time, according to insiders.

Tribune reporters Michael Oneal and Becky Yerak contributed.

rchannick@tribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick

Read More..

Bears fire Lovie Smith after 9 seasons; search for new head coach begins

Chicago Tribune sports columnist Steve Rosenbloom on the Bears firing Lovie Smith.

The epitaph for Lovie Smith's tenure as head coach of the Bears could read, "He couldn't fix the offense."

For all the good things Smith did in his nine years in Chicago, his undoing was his inability to take care of the side of the ball in which he had no background.

The Bears fired Smith on Monday after a 10-6 season, Tribune sources have confirmed. They started 7-1 but fell apart down the stretch, mostly because they couldn't score.

Since Smith took over in 2004, the Bears have ranked higher than 23rd in offense only once. They have ranked 28th or lower four times.

Smith tried four offensive coordinators during his Bears career. His first thought was to run a similar offense to the one he was familiar with when he was defensive coordinator of the Rams, so he hired Terry Shea.

The Bears finished last in the league in offense behind quarterbacks Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Jonathan Quinn and Rex Grossman, and Shea was dismissed after one season.

Smith then turned to Ron Turner for his second stint as Bears offensive coordinator. Turner lasted five years in what was the heyday for Smith's offense.

It was during this period that Smith's stubborn allegiance to Grossman became an issue. "Rex is our quarterback," he said over and over again.

Those days Smith often talked frequently about how the Bears "get off the bus running," and the team achieved its offensive identity by pounding the ball with Thomas Jones, then Cedric Benson and finally Matt Forte.

But after the Bears traded for Jay Cutler in 2009 and they still finished 23rd in offense and missed the playoffs, Turner was made the scapegoat and fired.

An extensive job search that included interest in Jeremy Bates, Rob Chudzinski and Tom Clements led the Bears back to Smith's old friend Mike Martz, for whom he had worked in St. Louis. Going from the conservative Turner to the aggressive Martz was quite a philosophical shift for Smith.

Martz's offense sputtered in 2010 but started to come on the next season. Then Cutler broke his thumb in the 10th game, and the team unraveled. The Bears lost five straight, and Martz was fired along with general manager Jerry Angelo, the man who brought Smith to Chicago.

Smith's next move was to go conservative again, this time by promoting offensive line coach Mike Tice. A first-time play caller, Tice made great use of new acquisition Brandon Marshall but struggled to find other reliable targets or to overcome protection issues.

The Bears finished 28th in offense.

The only time Smith enjoyed a fairly efficient offense was in 2006, when the offense ranked 15th in a season that ended in the Super Bowl.

Defensively, the Bears were on the other end of the spectrum under Smith. With perennial Pro Bowlers Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs as the constants, Smith's defenses usually were among the best in the NFL.

Since 2004, the Bears defense ranks first in the league in takeaways, three-and-out drives forced and third-down percentage and is fourth in scoring defense.

Smith's defenders scored 34 touchdowns, which became a signature of the Bears' style of play.

It was Smith's defense that drove the Bears to their first Super Bowl appearance in 21 years after the 2006 season. Smith and Tony Dungy became the first two African-Americans to coach a Super Bowl team as the Bears took on the Colts.

Read More..

Can Samsung survive without Android?

Samsung (005930) is the world’s top Android smartphone vendor by a staggering margin. Aside from LG (066570), which managed a small $ 20 million profit from its mobile division last quarter, no other global Android vendor can figure out how to make money selling Android phones. Meanwhile, Samsung posted a $ 6 billion profit on $ 47.6 billion in sales in the third quarter, thanks largely to record smartphone shipments and a massive marketing budget. Even as industry watchers turn sour on Apple, Samsung is seen steamrolling into 2013 and its stock is up nearly 50% on the year while Apple (AAPL) shares continue to fall from a record high hit in September. As unstoppable as Samsung appears right now, one key question remains: Is Samsung driving Android’s success or is Android driving Samsung’s success? Starting in 2013, we may finally begin to find out.

[More from BGR: Unreleased ‘BlackBerry X10′ QWERTY phone appears again in new photos]

Earlier this year, BGR wrote about Samsung’s effort to look beyond Android. Even with its own UI and application suite — and even with its own content services — Samsung will always rely on Google (GOOG) if it continues to base its devices on Google’s latest Android builds.

[More from BGR: RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone]

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it means Samsung will never truly control the end-to-end experience on its products. It also means Samsung will never truly own its smartphones and tablets. Instead, Samsung’s devices will deliver an experience that is an amalgamation of Google’s vision and its own.

But there are alternative options. One example is the path Amazon (AMZN) has taken. Amazon let Google do the grunt work and then took its open-source Android OS and built its own software and service layer on top. Kindle Fire users don’t sit around waiting for Android updates — many of them don’t even know they’re using an Android-powered tablet.

Samsung could do the same thing, but there is a great deal of prep work that would need to be done first. Amazon’s efforts were so successful (depending on your measure of success) because the company already had a massive ecosystem in place before it even launched its first device. Streaming movies and TV shows, eBooks, retail shopping and a stocked application store were all available on the Kindle Fire from day one.

Samsung doesn’t have this luxury. Yet.

Samsung could also take ownership of a new OS, and Tizen may or may not end up being that OS. Samsung is co-developing the new Linux-based mobile platform with Intel (INTC) and others, and a new rumor from Japan’s The Daily Yomiuri suggests Samsung plans to launch its first Tizen phone in 2013. “Samsung will probably begin selling the [Tizen] smartphones next year and they are likely to be released in Japan and other countries at around the same time,” the site’s sources claim.

This will be a slow process. If Samsung follows the same path it took with Bada, Samsung’s earlier Linux-based OS that was folded into the Tizen project, things will start out slow as Samsung launches regional devices that are restricted to a few Eastern markets. Testing the waters before dumping serious marketing dollars into the project isn’t a bad idea, especially considering the battle at the bottom of the smartphone OS food chain that will already be taking place in 2013.

But one thing is clear: Samsung is looking to broaden its strategy and move beyond a point where it relies entirely on another company for its smartphone software.

This article was originally published by BGR

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Can Samsung survive without Android?
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

List: No love for ‘fiscal cliff,’ ‘spoiler alert’

DETROIT (AP) — Spoiler alert: This story contains words and phrases that some people want to ban from the English language. “Spoiler alert” is among them. So are “kick the can down the road,” ”trending” and “bucket list.”

A dirty dozen have landed on the 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. The nonbinding, tongue-in-cheek decree released Monday by northern Michigan’s Lake Superior State University is based on nominations submitted from the United States, Canada and beyond.

“Spoiler alert,” the seemingly thoughtful way to warn readers or viewers about looming references to a key plot point in a film or TV show, nevertheless passed its use-by date for many, including Joseph Foly, of Fremont, Calif. He argued in his submission the phrase is “used as an obnoxious way to show one has trivial information and is about to use it, no matter what.”

At the risk of further offense, here’s another spoiler alert: The phrase receiving the most nominations this year is “fiscal cliff,” banished because of its overuse by media outlets when describing across-the-board federal tax increases and spending cuts that economists say could harm the economy in the new year without congressional action.

“You can’t turn on the news without hearing this,” said Christopher Loiselle, of Midland, Mich., in his submission. “I’m equally worried about the River of Debt and Mountain of Despair.”

Other terms coming in for a literary lashing are “superfood,” ”guru,” ”job creators” and “double down.”

University spokesman Tom Pink said that in nearly four decades, the Sault Ste. Marie school has “banished” around 900 words or phrases, and somehow the whole idea has survived rapidly advancing technology and diminishing attention spans.

Nominations used to come by mail, then fax and via the school’s website, he said. Now most come through the university’s Facebook page. That’s fitting, since social media has helped accelerate the life cycle of certain words and phrases, such as this year’s entry “YOLO” — “you only live once.”

“The list surprises me in one way or another every year, and the same way every year: I’m always surprised how people still like it, love it,” he said.

Rounding out the list are “job creators/creation,” ”boneless wings” and “passion/passionate.” Those who nominated the last one say they are tired of hearing about a company’s “passion” as a substitute for providing a service or product for money.

Andrew Foyle, of Bristol, England, said it’s reached the point where “passion” is the only ingredient that keeps a chef from preparing “seared tuna” that tastes “like dust swept from a station platform.”

“Apparently, it’s insufficient to do it ably, with skill, commitment or finesse,” Foyle said. “Passionate, begone!”

As usual, the etymological exercise — or exorcise — only goes so far. Past lists haven’t eradicated “viral,” “amazing,” ”LOL” or “man cave” from everyday use.

___

Follow Jeff Karoub on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffkaroub

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: List: No love for ‘fiscal cliff,’ ‘spoiler alert’
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The Boss: For Kathryn Giusti, Two Wars Against Multiple Myeloma

MY identical twin sister, Karen, and I have two older brothers. We were raised in Blue Bell, Pa., where my father was a family physician and my mother was a nurse. We spent summers on Long Beach Island, N.J., where both of us were waitresses at a busy seafood restaurant.

Kathryn E. Giusti is the C.E.O. and co-founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Founda- tion in Norwalk, Conn.

AGE 54

LOVES TO Watch her son, who plays baseball, and her daughter, a cheerleader, at their events.

My sister and I have always been best friends. We even went to the same college, the University of Vermont. I was scientifically inclined and majored in biology. We graduated in 1980, and my sister later became a lawyer.

I was accepted to medical school, but my father was opposed to that. He thought I was too impatient to cope with medicine’s bureaucracy. Instead, I took a job in sales at Merck, the drug maker.

To my chagrin, the company sent me to its site in West Point, Pa., very close to home. After two years, I moved over to work in the company’s marketing and communications area, but I began to realize that I needed some formal business education.

In 1983, I entered Harvard Business School, specializing in marketing. I met my husband, Paul Giusti, there. After we earned our M.B.A.’s in 1985, he started a real estate development business in the Midwest, and I joined Gillette in Boston in its personal care division.

We married in 1990 and moved to Chicago, and I worked briefly at Brach’s, the candy manufacturer, in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. I then joined G. D. Searle in Skokie, helping to develop new products like Ambien. Later, I was promoted to manage the company’s worldwide arthritis drugs division.

In late 1995, I was feeling tired and went in for a physical. Blood tests found that I had multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. I was shocked because I was only 37. My grandfather had had the disease, but I wasn’t in the usual demographic or age group. The scariest part was that there were no drugs in the pipeline to combat the cancer.

Our first child, Nicole, was about 2 when I received the diagnosis. I was determined that I was going to have another child, which I did. Our son, David, was born in 1997.

At that point, I did not expect to live beyond a few years, so we moved to New Canaan, Conn., to be closer to our families. Paul sold his company, but the new owners who were based in McLean, Va., asked him to remain as chief operating officer, which he did, working from a New Canaan office.

After our move, my sister and I organized a fund-raiser, garnering $400,000. We used that to start the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, which initially made grants to speed development of cancer-fighting drugs. (Later, it also worked with academic and clinical centers and pharmaceutical companies on initiatives like a tissue bank.) Six years later, in 2004, I started the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium to foster collaboration among cancer centers, to start a patient tissue bank for research and to encourage broader participation in clinical trials.

I was working full time and raising my family, but in 2005 my health began to deteriorate. In early 2006, I received a stem cell transplant. Karen donated the cells, and the operation was done at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. When I came home, I weighed 90 pounds and was bald and fragile.

It took several months to recover, but I returned to work later that year and kept building our network of 16 clinics and hospitals that participate in the clinical trials, tissue bank and genome research. We’ve raised $200 million since the foundation opened and are now focused on helping patients use individualized medicine to fight cancer.

I still get a huge knot in my stomach every two months, when I check in at Dana-Farber for my test results. But I believe we have made some real progress because I continue to work impatiently to cure this disease and other cancers as well.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

Read More..

Tribune Co. emerges from bankruptcy

The last day of 2012 is the first of a new era for Tribune Co.

After spending more than four years embroiled in a contentious Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, the reorganized Chicago-based media company emerged Monday under new owners and a newly appointed board, freed from its massive debt and facing an uncertain future.

Senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are set to take control of Tribune Co.’s storied portfolio of publishing and broadcasting assets, including the Chicago Tribune, officials said.

It was an almost anticlimactic end to a long and painful chapter in Tribune Co.'s 165-year history. Late Sunday, the new Tribune Co. named its board of directors, filed notification with the Delaware bankruptcy court where the bulk of legal wrangling took place and declared its existence.

"It took a long time to get here," said Ken Liang, a managing director at Oaktree and a new member of the board. "It was a tough restructuring. We're pretty excited about the exit."

The new board also will include Tribune Co. CEO Eddy Hartenstein; Ross Levinsohn, who recently left as interim chief executive of Yahoo Inc.; Craig Jacobson, a well-known entertainment lawyer; Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co. and Ceasars Entertainment; Bruce Karsh, Oaktree president; and Peter Liguori, a former top television executive at Fox and Discovery.

Liguori is expected to be named chief executive of Tribune Co. going forward.

Hartenstein, who is publisher of the Los Angeles Times, has been CEO of Tribune Co. since May 2011. He will remain in the role until the board convenes its first meeting in the next several weeks, where it will name the company’s executive officers, according to a company statement.

“Tribune will emerge from the bankruptcy process as a multi-media company with a great mix of profitable assets, strong brands in major markets and a much-improved capital structure,” Hartenstein said in the statement.

Tribune Co. owns 23 television stations, including WGN-Ch. 9, WGN America, eight daily newspapers and other media assets, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing. Eventually, all the assets are expected to be sold, according to the new owners.

They take the reins of a company that saw its worth essentially cut in half since 2007, when Chicago billionaire Sam Zell took it private in an $8.2 billion leveraged buyout. The rapid decline was mostly due to falling newspaper valuations in the face of digital competition. The anticipated hiring of Liguori suggests that broadcasting will be the operational focus going forward, according to several media analysts.

Los Angeles-based Oaktree, the largest shareholder, with about 23 percent of the equity, appointed two of seven board members. Both Angelo Gordon and JPMorgan have roughly a 9 percent stake and appointed one seat each. The three jointly appointed two more board members, with the final seat occupied by the chief executive.

Among the outgoing board members is Zell, whose deal was seen at the time as an alternative to the squabbles within Tribune Co. that threatened to break apart the then-publicly traded company. But the Great Recession and plummeting advertising revenues across all media, especially the struggling newspaper industry, made the company’s resulting $13 billion debt load untenable.

Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008. Zell blamed a “perfect storm” of industry and economic forces. But the bankruptcy case turned on charges leveled by junior creditors that saddling the company with such a debt burden left it insolvent from the outset.

Led by an aggressive distressed debt fund called Aurelius Capital Management, the junior creditors pressed litigation that stretched out the case for three and a half years in a Delaware court before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey confirmed the reorganization plan in July. An emergency appeal to stay that decision was dismissed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September. In November, the Federal Communications Commission signed off on waivers needed to transfer Tribune Co.’s broadcast properties to the new ownership, clearing the last hurdle to its emergence from Chapter 11.

“Usually, bankruptcy cases like this take much less time and cost less money,” said Douglas Baird, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at the University of Chicago.

Baird said legal fees for most large corporate bankruptcies run 3 to 4 percent of the company’s total worth. The Tribune Co. case, which will likely cost the company more than $500 million in legal and other professional fees, was more than twice that percentage, due to both the extended litigation and the company’s declining valuation.

Before cash distributions and new financing, a 2012 analysis by financial adviser Lazard valued the broadcasting assets, including the TV stations, WGN-AM 720, CLTV and national cable channel WGN America, at $2.85 billion. Other strategic assets, such as online job site CareerBuilder and cable channel Food Network, are worth $2.26 billion.

Tribune Co.’s newspaper holdings, including the Tribune, Los Angeles Times and six other daily publications, have withered to $623 million in total value, according to Lazard. In 2006, entertainment mogul David Geffen made a $2 billion cash offer for the Los Angeles Times.

Read More..

Urlacher out for fourth straight game

Bears quarterback Jay Cutler arrives for Sunday's game. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Tribune Photo / December 30, 2012)

By Brad Biggs, Tribune reporter

10:48 a.m. CST, December 30, 2012

DETROIT -- Middle linebacker Brian Urlacher is inactive for the fourth consecutive week because of his injured hamstring as the Chicago Bears prepare to face the Detroit Lions on Sunday.

The Bears will start Nick Roach in his place for the must-win game against the Lions at Ford Field. But the team is holding out hope Urlacher could return next weekend if the Bears are alive in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

The Bears must defeat the Lions and have the Green Bay Packers win at Minnesota to reach the postseason.

Starting free safety Chris Conte also is sidelined with a hamstring injury and Anthony Walters, an undrafted rookie free agent a year ago, will make his first NFL start. Special teams standout Blake Costanzo, another linebacker, is also inactive. He’s missed consecutive games with a calf muscle injury.

Also inactive for the Bears are running back Armando Allen, who has a knee injury, third quarterback Josh McCown, offensive tackle Cory Brandon and defensive tackle Nate Collins, who had been active for nine consecutive games.

The Lions got some good news as tight end Brandon Pettigrew, second on the team with 57 receptions, will play. He was listed as doubtful with an ankle injury that kept him out of the previous two games.

Inactive for Detroit are third quarterback Kellen Moore, running back Kevin Smith, cornerback Drayton Florence, safety Ricardo Silva, offensive tackles Jason Fox and Corey Hilliard and defensive end Ronnell Lewis.

bmbiggs@tribune.com

Twitter @BradBiggs

Read More..