Los Angeles Times: Papers, Web firms need 'a new deal,' Zell says

From the Los Angeles Times:

"Sam Zell, who agreed to a takeover this week of Tribune Co., came to the heart of Silicon Valley on Thursday evening and said there needed to be "a new deal and new formulas" between newspapers and Internet companies.

Journalists produce the news that search engines such as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. seamlessly and freely make available to anyone with a computer, Zell said during a presentation on corporate governance at Stanford University. "If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be?" the Chicago real estate maverick mused.

His answer: Not very."

Comment: I guess Zell, who admits in the article that he's "been in the news business for less than a week, so he wasn't a genius at it yet," has been reading David Lazarus' columns.