Today Kevin Roderick blows the whistle on Tribune Company CEO Sam Zell's lunchtime visit to UCLA this Thursday. An early morning L.A. Observed item posts an email from the Anderson School of Management, inviting all its students to sit at the master's feet while he regales them with “his perspectives on the state of the economy.” An economy, the school might mention, that Zell has had more than a modest hand in helping to destroy.

The announcement notes that a light lunch will be served, which is more than the laid-off, fired and bought-out employees of the bankrupt L.A. Times are getting from Zell. No news of the event appears on Anderson's Web site. There's also no news about Zell's UCLA itinerary after the lunch, but he will not be reassuring journalism students about careers in newspapers — UCLA has no journalism department. Meanwhile, Trib mouthpiece Gary Weitman tangles with a December Jim Hightower column that appeared Monday in the Waltham, Massachusetts Daily News Tribune, accusing Hightower of misrepresenting the plight of Tribune employees' retirement plans in the corporation's post-bankruptcy era.

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