• by Erik Sass , November 2, 2010

With the top members of Sam Zell's management team gone, more Tribune executives are set to leave the company, suggesting a full-scale power shift is underway as the beleaguered publisher tries to negotiate its way out of bankruptcy.

This week brought the departure of Tribune's top digital exec, interactive president Marc Chase, as well as senior vice president and chief operating officer Jeff Kapugi and executive vice president Carolyn Gilbert, per the company's flagship newspaper The Chicago Tribune.

These departures come close on the heels of high-profile resignations by CEO Randy Michaels and chief innovation officer Lee Abrams following controversy over a company-wide email from Abrams deemed inappropriate. The three executives who left this week were all former associates of Michaels in his previous career in radio at Jacor and Clear Channel Communications.

The Chicago Tribune also reported that John Phillips (a former Clear Channel traffic reporter) is planning to leave his position as director of facilities at the Tribune Tower in Chicago, while his wife Betsy Phillips, also from Clear Channel, is planning to leave her position as vice president of sales for Tribune Broadcasting.

Although a company spokesman declined to comment on the most recent resignations, it seems clear Tribune's creditors are cooperating with the board of directors to push out the leadership appointed by Sam Zell, following his takeover of the company in October 2007.

Various creditors have made no secret of their desire to take direct control of the company, and Michaels was said to resign under pressure from the board of directors.

The turmoil among Tribune's top ranks also comes just a few weeks after a scathing article by The New York Times' media columnist David Carr, in which Tribune employees complained about the "frat house" antics of the senior management team assembled by Zell, who resigned his post as CEO back in December 2009.

Meanwhile, the management changes are almost certainly related to ongoing negotiations to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in which many dissident bondholders have expressed opposition to the current management. In mid-September, one unsecured bondholder, Aurelius Capital Management, demanded that Tribune's entire management be replaced by a court-appointed trustee, alleging that the current management had behaved "dishonestly and fraudulently."

Separately, in an email defending himself against various criticisms, Abrams argued that the timing of the moves against Tribune's management is no coincidence: "I suspect that a major component of this debacle is being motivated by a power play to seize creative, cultural and business control of the company as it emerges from Chapter 11."