It appears that the financial fate of the sprawling Tribune media empire may hinge on the company’s rights to a 78-year-old comic book character.

The way folks in Chicago like to tell it, Thomas Ricketts bleeds Cubbie blue.

Several current and former Los Angeles Times staffers have sued Chicago billionaire Sam Zell and the Tribune Company for misusing employees’ stock to purchase the media conglomerate last December.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has agreed in principle to pay $580 million for Newsday in a deal with the Chicago-based Tribune Co. that would reshape the New York City tabloid world.

Tribune Company owner Sam Zell may be entertaining bids for Newsday, the company’s Long Island paper, amid mounting financial pressures.

Bill Gates and Pete Peterson

Bill Gates may have lost top seating on the Forbes billionaires list, but he leads Vanity Fair’s accounting of America’s 50 richest paydays.

The magazine ranked windfalls that came from big deals such as company sales, real estate transactions and stock cash-outs. Gates sold $2.5 billion in Microsoft stock last year.

The colorful Sam Zell assumed leadership of the Tribune Company yesterday, after closing an $8.2 billion deal to take the company private.

Former chairman & CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons immediately stepped down, making way for Zell to assume both titles.

Bad times for newspapers can be good times for newspaper lobbyists.

Major publishers, which often cover K Street as a hotbed of corruption, spend thousands each year to advance and protect their own interests.

Yet one issue that has fueled the Washington media lobby for years may soon disappear. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin has drafted a plan that would abolish rules forbidding companies from owning both a newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same city.