Tribune finally finds its man: Liguori

After weeks of rumors, the troubled Tribune Co. finally made it official yesterday: Peter Liguori is the new chief executive officer, taking over after years of turmoil for the media company, which just recently pulled out of bankruptcy.

He succeeds Eddy Hartenstein, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who had been interim CEO for nearly two years.

Liguori is a well-respected former television executive who recent served as chief operating officer at Discovery Communications and was at Fox before that.

He faces a huge number of challenges, and one of his first moves is expected to be engineering a selloff of all or most of Tribune’s newspapers.

The company owns eight dailies, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. Its new owners, a number of private equity firms, have suggested that they want to transition their focus to television and new media.

The company went into bankruptcy under former owner Sam Zell, who bought Tribune in 2007. His tenure was a mess, marked by embarrassing stories about top executives and a huge number of job cuts.

Employees complained that Zell and his cohorts didn’t understand newspapers and made silly suggestions.

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