After meeting well into the night Sunday, the Tribune Co. board of directors agreed to sell the company to Chicago-based billionaire Sam Zell for an estimated $8.2 billion. According to the Los Angeles Times, Zell’s bid trumped last-minute offers from L.A. moguls Ron Burkle and Eli Broad.

L.A. Times

Billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell has reached an agreement to buy Tribune Co. — owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs baseball team — a source with knowledge of the deal said this morning.

The deal, probably worth close to $8 billion not including Tribune’s nearly $5 billion of existing debt, would put a 65-year-old entrepreneur famed for turning around troubled properties at the helm of the nation’s third largest newspaper chain and one of its largest conglomerations of television stations.

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