Los Angeles Times Building: One Last Tour Inside Spring Street

When Tribune split into two companies, Tribune Media — which took the TV and digital assets — also shamelessly grabbed the real estate where Tribune Publishing's newspapers had lived for decades. It forced papers like the Chicago Tribune and our Los Angeles Times to suddenly pay rent on their own buildings! Now that the L.A. Times is out of the Tronc (er, I guess it's Tribune Publishing again) orbit, new owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is moving the newspaper to a building in El Segundo. He's promising updated facilities — and considering the sorry shape of the LA Times building, which hasn't been kept up by its Tribune Media landlords — that could be a good thing. Not so much for some of the staff, which will now have to alter their commutes. (Some will remain in downtown, in a new space above The Last Bookstore).

As a Los Angeles booster, I had somehow never taken a Los Angeles Times tour. Shame on me. I had, well, decades where I could have. So when I discovered that the final tour was this past Friday — and that it was all booked up — I put a plea out to my pals at the paper: Let me visit!

Thankfully, Kate Stanhope and Yvonne Villarreal came through, and offered to invite me over for a peek inside the LA Times building, one last time. Thanks to them — and here's a look at the final days of the Los Angeles Times on Spring Street.

In the Spring Street lobby (where most employees and people enter).

The Los Angeles Times hallways are filled with history: Key front pages, Pulitzer Awards, tributes to legendary employees like Jim Murray, and much more.

In the Globe lobby — the iconic space most people think of, when they think about the LA Times building — a museum's worth of historic artifacts, including this typesetting machine. Most of this will be moving to the El Segundo building, where Soon-Shiong plans a new museum.

The famed Globe lobby.

The Los Angeles Times has won 44 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942.

Harry Chandler.

Gen Harrison Gray Otis.

More from the Globe lobby.

Hidden inside the old phone booth: A relic of an old pay phone!

Also in the lobby: This eagle was saved from the old Los Angeles Times building that was famously bombed in 1910.

The old publisher's office.

The famed Los Angeles Times test kitchen.

Now mostly packed up and ready for the move.

Where LA Times staffers would often do live news shots.

A view of the Calendar section newsroom.

More old memorabilia — classic cameras.

Signs from the recent fight to form a union are still everywhere.

PTSD -- Post-Tronc Stress Disorder.

Super Patrick!

The Tronc banner of shame, featuring Sam Zell and Lee Abrams as well.

Not a lot of fans of Tronc's money-grabbing exiting chairman Michael Ferro.

Tribune Wraps Today's LA Times With a Plea For KTLA

Tribune hopes it can use its power of the press in its standoff with DirecTV. As talks between Tribune and DirecTV over carriage of Tribune TV stations (including KTLA) reach a stalemate, Tribune plans to pull KTLA off the satellite service effective March 31. You'll have some pretty unhappy "The Vampire Diaries" fans after that.

Today, Tribune wrapped the Los Angeles Times' A section with an ad warning DirecTV viewers of that fact -- and urging them to contact the satellite provider. One delicious detail in this fight that several people have pointed out: Tribune president/CEO Eddy W. Hartenstein is the former CEO of DirecTV. (Hartenstein is also the publisher and CEO of the L.A. Times.) This time, it's personal!

Considering Bankruptcy? Well As A Matter of Fact...

Spotted by Ish Entertainment's Michael Hirschorn, who put this on his Facebook page. It was too funny to pass up borrowing: As Tribune looks to get out of bankruptcy, this sticker ad slapped on the front of the L.A. Times today is a little too close for comfort.

An American Tragedy: How A Bunch of Frat Boys Destroyed Tribune

David Carr's take on the management team that came in to run Tribune -- and further dismantled the once proud media company -- is already the talk of journalism.

Carr's piece, in Wednesday's New York Times, paints a crass environment championed by Sam Zell, Randy Michaels and crew. Lewd behavior is rewarded, sophomoric humor allowed and questionable business practices encouraged:

Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed.

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

Carr does a thorough job explaining the issues facing Tribune -- and notes that even as the company struggles to climb out of bankruptcy, senior management has still been handed hefty bonuses. It's as if simply stripping the Tribune Tower bare wasn't enough -- these guys felt the need to torch the place.