Publishing giants speak in graduate finance class

Gainesville, Fla. – Norman Pearlstine (Senior Advisor, The Carlyle Group, and former editor-in-chief of Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal) and John S. Carroll (former editor of the Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun) were recent guests in Adjunct Professor Bruce S. Foerster’s “Capitalism” course, part of the Master of Science in Finance Program.

The pair participated in a roundtable discussion pursuant to a class case study framed by two UF students (Jeremy Bailys and Mark Schreiner), and focused on the history and future of the newspaper industry and newspaper journalism: “Tribune Company: Trials, Tribulations, and the Transformation of the Newspaper Industry.”

Together, Pearlstine and Carroll have more than 60 years of combined experience in the media business as journalists and businessmen at some of the world’s most prestigious publications. Much of their discussion spoke to the Tribune Company’s purchase of Times Mirror (which included the Los Angeles Times) in 2000, and the ultimate sale of Tribune to Chicago real estate investor Sam Zell in 2007. Of major import was discussion of the trend of corporate takeovers in the media, and the disconnect between profit margins and local communities as chains take over family-run businesses. Pearlstine and Carroll also spoke on the deconstruction of the monopoly model, as the Internet continues to erode print newspaper readership.

John Carroll also served as the Knight Visiting Lecturer at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University in 2006. Norm Pearlstine recently completed his first book, Off the Record…The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources.

Warrington’s Master of Science in Finance Program receives financial support from BB&T and the Hough Program in Finance.