* If true, this is very good news…

Tribune Co. Chairman Sam Zell has rejected former Gov. James Thompson’s secret plan to acquire and renovate Wrigley Field for at least $400 million without raising taxes and now plans to package the Cubs and their landmark stadium in a private transaction, sources said Monday.

* Some of the possible reasons…

Zell, Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney and their advisers have concluded that the equity [seat sales] plan and its tax ramifications would violate both the Internal Revenue Service code and the rules of Major League Baseball, the sources said. […]

[Also] the plan could have driven away potential buyers of the franchise. The next Cubs owner could have been denied revenue from the best seats in the house.

* And this could be another reason…

Chicago-based Tribune Company announced it’s selling its Long-Island based-paper Newsday to Cablevision Systems Corporation. With a circulation of close to 400,000, Newsday is one of the country’s largest regional newspapers, serving mainly Long Island and parts of New York City.

The cable television provider bought the paper for $650 million. […]

Tribune needs to offset $8 billion of debt the company took on when it went private last year.

Those debt payments were crushing, and Zell needed cash quickly. That’s a big reason why he was trying to do the Wrigley Field deal with the state this spring. The immediate crisis may have passed, however.

Something tells me, though, that we are not yet out of the danger zone on a taxpayer financed bailout of Sam Zell’s Wrigley Field, or perhaps the new buyer. These things never completely die.

*** UPDATE 1 *** Cub chairman doesn’t completely rule out state sale, but says they’re moving ahead with a private sale…

Crane Kenney, the Cubs’ chairman and outgoing general counsel of parent Tribune… says there’s still a chance that Wrigley could be sold separately to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority.

But Kenney says Tribune’s moving ahead to package the stadium together with the ballclub in a private sale. Outside experts believe the sale could fetch as much as $1 billion for the media conglomerate.

Kenney told the AP that the company’s moving the private sale process forward and expects to get the financial books to buyers within the next two weeks.