Quite a bit!

Job One has been overhauling MySpace, which is still very much a work in progress. But Miller’s full plate includes lots of other tasks too. Like trying to convince Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT) to pony up for a big search deal to replace the Google/MySpace deal that expires next year.

Equally difficult job: Trying to figure how to get consumers to pay for some of the content News Corp. currently provides for free on the Web.

The Los Angeles Times advances that part of the story this morning with a report that Miller is “believed to have met” with rival publishers–including those from the New York Times (NYT), Washington Post Co. (WPO), Hearst and Tribune Co.–about creating a consortium to charge for online news.

I believe it. My understanding is that while Murdoch has been vocal about his intent to start charging consumers to read his stuff, the more sober assessment within News Corp. (which owns this Web site) is that charging for news will only work if there is a critical mass of publishers trying to do it together. How many would that be? “Enough people so that it matters,” a News Corp. exec tells me.

Whether you could actually get enough big publishers to work together (something that start-up Journalism Online is trying to do, in its own way; so for that matter, is the Associated Press) is an open question, of course. And then there are the inevitable antitrust issues.

But I think the most practical problem for News Corp., and everyone else who works in the news business, is that from the consumer’s perspective, very little of the stuff we produce is worth paying for. That doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to sell specialized bits of content (a la The Wall Street Journal or Consumer Reports). But a great deal of the stuff we make can be found all over the Web, with little to distinguish it, and the model that used to support this content–near-monopolies on eyeballs and ad dollars–has disappeared. Pay wall or no, that’s going to have change going forward.

But then again, I don’t work there.

Here’s the text of a petition that started circulating around the LAT newsroom this morning. I’m told that 100 members of the paper’s staff have signed it so far.

We the journalists of the newsroom strenuously object to the decision to sell an ad, in the form of a phony news story, on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
The NBC ad may have provided some quick cash, but it has caused incalculable damage to this institution. This action violates a 128-year pact with our readers that the front page is reserved for the most meaningful stories of the day. Placing a fake news article on A-1 makes a mockery of our integrity and our journalistic standards.
The Los Angeles Times stands apart from other sources of news and information in Southern California because of our willingness to report the truth, even when it angers powerful interests or puts us in peril.  Our willingness to sell our most precious real estate to an advertiser is embarrassing and demoralizing.

UPDATE: I’m told publisher Eddy Hartenstein is supposed to be addressing the staff this afternoon.

But who’s going to pony up? I will, says Eli Broad.

The Los Angeles billionaire, who made his money in the home-building and insurance businesses, thought about buying his hometown Los Angeles Times a couple of years ago. But Sam Zell ended up taking the paper as part of his ill-fated Tribune Co. purchase in 2007.

Now that Tribune is in Chapter 11, Broad could pick it up at a substantial discount.

Reuters:

“Eli Broad, a wealthy philanthropist who once looked at buying the Los Angeles Times, is still interested in a foray into the newspaper business, he told a gathering in New York on Monday night.

‘We can’t afford to lose good newspaper journalism, investigative reporting,’ the 75-year old retired business maven said during a lecture on business in philanthropy at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

Broad, jokingly, said: ‘I’ve regained my sanity since then,’ referring to his earlier interest. But turning more serious, he added: ‘I would like to see our foundation and others join together to own the L.A. Times.’”

Forbes pegged Broad’s net worth at $6.7 billion back in September, so even if he’s been pole-axed since then, he’ll still be able to buy the paper without breaking a sweat.

But unless Broad is going to convince his fellow gazillionaires to adopt papers throughout the country, this strategy won’t let the industry off the hook.

Tribune Co. has scrapped plans to put the Tribune Tower up for sale because of cratering real estate prices and the company’s late-year bankruptcy protection filing.

The media giant hired brokers last summer to sell the landmark tower as well as the Los Angeles Times’ headquarters complex, known as Times Mirror Square, and had hoped to get marketing materials to prospective investors early this year. But the moribund real estate investment sales market prompted the company to shelve those plans, says Stephanie Pater, Tribune’s director of real estate.”

Easy to see why prospective buyers might be wary of taking on close to a million square feet of office space when the primary tenant is a newspaper with uncertain prospects.

So what does that mean for the New York Times Co.’s (NYT) effort to wring much needed cash out of its HQ? The company announced its plans to raise up to $225 million via a sale-leaseback of its Times Square building in early December. But we haven’t heard a peep about it since.

No news to report so far, says spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, via email. “There’s no update. We continue to actively pursue a sale-leaseback on our new headquarters.”

So. Anyone interested? The Times has up to 828,000 square feet to dispose of, according to the company’s latest 10-K.

[Image Credit: sheliaellen]

If you’re at all interested in sports and business, it’s worth a quick read–Cuban has a nice touch at the keyboard, and really, how many other billionaires can you describe that way?

But for the time-pressed, here’s the upshot: Given that the Zell’s Tribune Company has turned into a nightmare for Zell, that price should come down, which seems to be Cuban’s thinking here:

So when it came down to it, I did what I thought was the only smart thing to do. I asked for an extension. I knew that if they got the money they wanted for the team, well my bid was not going to be high enough anyway. If they didnt, or the other bidders couldnt come up with their money, they would come back to me.

I’m still waiting.”

The move will cost 16 employees their jobs, says John Paton, CEO of Impremedia, the publisher that owns Hoy and several other Spanish-language titles, including El Diario La Prensa in New York and La Opinión in Los Angeles.

Hoy joins a handful of other pubs that are cutting back on print or ditching it altogether–most recently, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News announced they would limit home delivery of the print edition to three days a week–but I wouldn’t go overboard reading too much into this one. That’s because the free distribution strategy that Hoy employed has been an experiment from the get-go.

That said, New York still boasts two free print dailies: Metro, published by Sweden-based Metro International SA, and AM New York, published by Cablevision (CVC), which bought it along with Newsday from the troubled Tribune Co. (TXA), which sold Hoy to Impremedia last year. Both target the elusive and wily young, affluent, nonnewspaper-reading demo.

Much of that debt belongs to big banks, of course–J.P. Morgan (JPM) has more than $1 billion by itself. But Tribune (TXA) owes lots (though much smaller amounts) of money to lots of media companies, too–mostly dollars that the company’s TV stations owe various studios.

Here’s who’s on the hook:

• Time Warner’s (TWX) Warner Bros. Television: $23.7 million
• News Corp.’s (NWS) Twentieth Television: $8.1 million
• Disney’s (DIS) Buena Vista Entertainment: $6.2 million
• GE’s (GE) NBCU Domestic TV: $4.9 million
• Sony’s (SNE) Sony Pictures Television: $2.2 million
• Nielsen Media Research: $1.9 million
• Viacom’s (VIA) Paramount Pictures: $1.69 million

Here’s the complete filing (click button on top right to enlarge):
Tribune’s Bankruptcy Filing

Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and a host of other media properties, has hired the Lazard investment bank and law firm Sidley Austin to try to stave off a Chapter 11 filing, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report. But that may not be enough: The WSJ says owner Sam Zell, who took on some $8 billion in debt to buy the company last year, is preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing “as soon as this week.”

Tribune’s problems are well documented and are similar to every other newspaper–including the New York Times (NYT), as well as papers owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns this Web site, as ad dollars, revenue and readers are all moving rapidly to the Web. In addition, Tribune is particularly debt-laden: It owes $1 billion in interest payments this year, has another $500 million payment due next June, and may already be violating debt covenants that limit the amount of money it can borrow.

Tribune tends to receive special attention from us media types because of the size of the company and the prominence of its publications, but also because Sam Zell gives good quote. He’s generated plenty of them since he bought the company, and most of them come back to the same theme: He bought the newspapers to make a profit, not because he’s enamored of newspapers. And he holds a visible contempt for journalists who worry about the future of journalism.

Here’s a sampling:

Zell at Quadrangle’s kind-of-off-the-record FourSquare gathering earlier this fall:

If you don’t want to be a charitable trust, then you’ve got to focus on producing a return for investors’ capital, and it’s just that simple. It worked in the old days because you could be a public trust and you could do well for your shareholders because you had a monopoly, and monopolies are wonderful. I mean, I think competition is terrific, particularly for all those guys out there. Me? I like monopolies. I’m just sorry I waited 60 years to get into the newspaper industry because the 40 I missed were great.”

And here’s Zell addressing the staff of his Orlando Sentinel in January 2008. Warning–one bit of colorful muttering at the very end of this: