Sam Zell recently scolded Arthur Sulzberger, Jr, saying, “If you want to be a charitable trust, be a charitable trust. If you don’t want to be a charitable trust, then you’ve got to focus on producing a return for investors’ capital, and it’s just that simple.”

Maybe it is that simple.  When you read the transcript of the interview Zell did with Condé Nast Portfolio’s Joanne Lipman, you can’t help but think, “Yes, rescue the New York Times from hard-nosed, clueless business people like Sam Zell!”  In the interview, which was conducted at a recent Quadrangle Group media conference, Zell was arrogant, aggressive, patronizing and dismissive.  Okay, big surprise.  Actually, I was surprised at how Zell’s bluster didn’t obscure that he really has no more idea than the newspaper execs he excoriates of how to rescue the business.  Zell blathers on about how the newspaper industry “grew up as a monopoly” and “truly still doesn’t understand that it is in a business with customers…”

The part about monopoly is true, of course, but Zell’s blithe assertion that today’s newspaper publishers don’t understand that they have to respond to customers is silly.  And what is Zell’s response to the overarching question, ‘what is the new business model?’  He says, ”I think the answer is we are testing and testing and changing. We’ve reformatted all eight newspapers. Among other things, we shrunk the size of the newspapers by an inch.”  Wow.  And he’s focusing more on Sunday editions because they’re more popular (a few other people have noticed this).  And he’s instituting commission-based pay for sales people.  Makes sense, but it’s not going to change the fundamental dynamic out there: print advertising is declining and online isn’t making up for the lost revenue.  And Zell talks up local coverage.  Gee, why didn’t I think of that?

Zell trashes his own company thoroughly in the interview and even managed to dis the Pulitzer Prize:  “I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize.”

So Zell is a successful and supremely confident real estate mogul with no new ideas for the newspaper business and absolutely no concept of the civic responsibility of newspapers or of the role of journalists play in a democracy or of how quality journalism might actually rebound to the bottom line.  Sam - spare us the tough talk, show some respect and come up with real idea or two.