Since taking control of the Tribune Company in December, Sam Zell has drawn a lot of attention in journalism circles for speeches laced with profanity, political incorrectness, insults and self-deprecating humor.

After closing the Tribune deal, Sam Zell toured his newsrooms, seeking to buoy employee morale.

But all the twittering and tut-tutting over Mr. Zell’s remarks — and his suggestions that some reporting jobs are not needed — masks a more serious concern. With the newspaper industry going through an unexpectedly sharp contraction, Tribune is struggling under $12.8 billion in debt, and its financial condition has deteriorated, creating what specialists say is a very real risk of credit default in the next year or so.

That has forced the company to consider the sale of Newsday, one of its most profitable newspapers — precisely the kind of move Mr. Zell had said he did not want to make. “We didn’t do this deal to figure out what to get rid of,” he told the company’s flagship paper, The Chicago Tribune, last year.

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