Wow.  Chi Trib is on its way to bigger and better things, as is clear from this Steve Rhodes piece for the NBC Chicago blog which was deleted by its high muck-a-mucks after Chi Trib complained, after which Rhodes quit, after which he wrote about it.

The offending item, deleted but Google-cached, remains for all to see, and let this be a lesson to legacy media moguls coast to coast: You get more bad publicity by pulling strings than by ignoring things.

It’s for all to see at the cached site, but here ‘tis in toto as a public service:

Tribune’s New CEO Has a Shocking Past

Zell steps aside for old friend

By STEVE RHODES

Updated 12:54 PM CST, Thu, Dec 3, 2009

Sam Zell is leaving control of Tribune Company in the hands of a former shock jock who used to tell jokes about gay people on the air and reportedly roamed the offices of a past employer with a rubber penis tied around his neck.

That would be Randy Michaels, Zell’s chief lieutenant at Tribune and now the once-staid media institution’s CEO, a post Zell abdicated on Wednesday. Zell will remain chairman of the company to provide, you know, a strategic vision until Tribune gets out of bankruptcy. Then Zell will probably be gone.

Michaels, however, reportedly wants to stay. What a nice gift that would be for Zell to leave behind.

Michaels is known for, among other things, believing he is the first to measure reporters’ productivity by the number of words they produce and actually believing that is a legitimate way to measure a reporter’s productivity. That and a lawsuit that once alleged – among other things – that he roamed his old Clear Channel offices with a “flexible rubber penis” tied around his neck as well as a host of other crude rituals. The suit was settled.

As an executive with Clear Channel, Michaels was “an effective but tasteless programmer,” according to Salon.

“Behind the mike he made a name for himself back in the ’70s and ’80s farting on the air, cracking jokes about gays and tantalizing listeners with descriptions of ‘incredibly horny, wet and ready’ naked in-studio guests,” the Salon account reports.

Michaels is “well regarded by the creditors who are expected to control Tribune when it emerges from bankruptcy protection next year,” the New York Times reports.

Michaels, whose real name is Benjamin Homel, was once described as the AntiChrist of radio. He told Radio Ink magazine that “We’d all prefer to be liked, so of course it bothers me. I think I personify uncomfortable change in our business for a lot of people.”

Or at least a certain kind of change.

Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.

Copyright NBC Local Media

First Published: Dec 3, 2009 9:09 AM CST

See also

* WBEZ blog, which has an interview with Rhodes

* “With Both Hands” on the same subject.