Randy Michaels

Robert Feder printed an excerpt of Jim O'Shea's book (The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers) about the Sam Zell era of Tribune company ownership. This was a story about Randy Michaels (the CEO) that I will never be able to scrub from my brain...

"A terrace on the twenty-second floor of Tribune Tower became Michaels’ coveted real estate. . . . Michaels had been warned not to leave the French doors leading outside ajar, because an open door would trigger an alarm at the security office downstairs. One warm day in 2008, a Tribune Tower security guard noticed something had triggered the alarm and sent a colleague up to the twenty-second floor to investigate. Seeing the door open, the guard stepped out onto the terrace and later reported to his superiors that he had stumbled onto Michaels, standing with his arms extended as if on a cross, receiving fellatio from a young female Tribune employee. The guard abruptly returned to the security office. But Randy Michaels was now the man at the top of the Tower and he could do as he damn well pleased."