The other shoe is falling

on the Tribune Co. The Tribune is reporting that Sam Zell has hired a lawyer in the ongoing investigation of Rod Blagojevich, and the Associated Press is reporting that Zell and Blagojevich met personally, as well has having contacts through intermediaries.
When Blago was arrested a few months ago, one of the items in his "crime spree" was an attempt to get the Trib to fire staff and moderate their editorial policies in return for the State of Illinois's assistance in selling Wrigley Field. At the time, the reporting left the Trib and its staff looking heroic for resisting, or ignoring, or being totally unaware of this pressure. Today's news doesn't indict the editorial staff. We may continue to think of them as responsible, professional, and, if you want to get gushy, heroic. Or clueless, perhaps.
But the Trib Co. itself, that's a different story. We always knew that Sam Zell is not a news pro, and should not be surprised if it turns out that he bargained with the Guvner. I've been betting he did. I could be wrong, of course.
The more interesting question is, Which matters more? The staff behaved ethically. Would ownership's turpitude trump that?
Yes.
Ethics in the journalism world, as now constituted, is for news workers. But all the newsworkers in the world behaving ethically can still end up producing a news media system that behaves in an unjust manner. Ethics is the moral compensation that newsworkers get instead of actual control over the system they populate.
If Fitzgerald hadn't blown up Blago and Zell, and they had conspired to trade favors, the editorial staff would still have been innocent and ethical and probably largely in the dark, but the public would have been betrayed nonetheless.