Editorial: Sam Zell was a tough, astute businessman. But at the helm of Tribune Co., he was disastrous.

Sam Zell’s misadventures at Tribune Co. hardly were emblematic of one of the most financially successful careers in Chicago history.

As his private investment company, Equity Investment Trusts, rightly noted in announcing Zell’s death at age 81 on Thursday, Zell’s “investments spanned industries across the globe,” and he had a “critical role in creating the modern real estate investment trust (REIT), which today is a more than $4 trillion industry.” At various points, Zell affiliates owned such famous companies as the Schwinn Bicycle Co., the Revco drugstore chain and the mattress company Sealy, not to mention many famous commercial buildings in Chicago and the suburbs.

According to Forbes, the self-made Zell had amassed a personal fortune worth more than $5.3 billion as of earlier this year, making him one of the richest Chicagoans and, inarguably, among the most successful businesspeople in the history of this city. When Blackstone Group bought Zell’s Equity Office Properties in 2007 for $35 billion, it became the largest leveraged buyout in history.

What was Zell’s secret? Much of it was outlined in an article Zell penned in Real Estate Review in 1982, aptly entitled “The Grave Dancer,” a moniker that the ever-colorful Zell attached to himself.

“The volume of real estate development in the United States,” Zell wrote, “always has been related to the availability of funds, rather than to demand.”

In other words, when money is flowing easily, lots of stuff gets built, even when the demand is low. When money is tight, less gets built, even when demand is high. You can see all of that playing out right now, in both the commercial and the residential markets. Zell’s strategy, in simple terms, was to acquire distressed property, a result of overbuilding when money came easy, and then manage them well enough that he could generate sufficient cash flow to enable him to hang on to them until demand had risen again, as it surely would. And did.

He knew the risks — even writing that “the investor in distressed property walks a thin line between success and failure” — but he believed he was smarter than his competitors and, for the most part, when it came to making money, he was right. As a result, he made a fortune, allowing him to throw famously lavish birthday parties headlined by the likes of Elton John.

Which brings us to the Tribune Co.

In 2007, during a time of stress for the media industry that foretold much worse to come, Zell spearheaded an ugly buyout of a great, proud Chicago enterprise that at the time also owned (among other entities) the Cubs, WGN-TV and WGN radio, and the Los Angeles Times, a deal so leveraged as to raise doubts about its ability to get regulatory approval.

The $8.2 billion deal only required Zell to put up $315 million in cash, and saddled what were creatively but absurdly deemed “employee-owners” with more than $13 billion in debt. In actuality, the “employee-owners” were powerless.

In theory, that debt was to be paid by cash generated by the company’s continuing operations (a classic Zell move) but, given the changing industry and the broader economic slowdown, it was an unrealistic expectation.

Within a year, Tribune Co. was in bankruptcy. When it emerged battered by fees and other costs, it did so only in pieces and with half of its formidable assets having been sucked away. Zell was not to blame for being invited in by a deeply flawed prior management. But it’s fair to say his deal destroyed one of Chicago’s most storied and crucial companies.

Worse, from our point of view, the famously profane Zell introduced crude management in the person of Randy Michaels (and others), whose values and exploits, extensively reported both locally and nationally, desecrated much of the company’s long-standing dignity. The new owners failed utterly to understand that such gravitas was part of Tribune’s brand and, therefore, also crucial to its ongoing cash flow.

Of course, Zell’s entire methodology, as with his real estate deals, was predicated on the assumption that he and his people were smarter than the blinkered previous management, which had overpaid for the acquisition of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, assets declining rapidly in value due to the rise of the revenue-devouring social media entities.

But Zell also failed to understand that media companies are more animated than buildings, and that newspapers tend to be staffed by mission-based journalists, as is true today. Zell and his lieutenants met blowback and resistance aplenty. Capable leaders headed for the doors.

Throughout his career, Zell had avoided most publicity, making few public statements. At Tribune Co., he hated being challenged by his own employees and it showed, only feeding the fury of the opposition.

But Zell also misunderstood not only the extent to which journalists are obsessed with their own industry, but their ability to fire up external klieg lights to shine on Zell himself. In other words, he learned that owning Tribune Co. was nothing like owning an apartment building or a shopping mall. It could and did fight back, even if destined to lose.

All of this was true even in death. As news broke Thursday, it was the failed Tribune buyout that hit the headlines of the obituaries and the first paragraphs, not the jobs that Zell had indisputably created elsewhere, nor the philanthropic activities his fortune has funded, or the astounding financial success he achieved.

Zell actually had anticipated some of these dangers back in 1982. “Grave dancing is an art that has many potential benefits,” he wrote, “But one must be careful while prancing around not to fall into the open pit and join the cadaver. There is often a fine line between the dancer and the danced upon.”

We offer our sympathies to Zell’s family and note his legacy as one of Chicago’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs.

But we were the danced upon.

Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.