“The move delivers a triple dose of irony,” MediaPost stated. The LA Times is widely considered a distressed property in the newspaper business, mostly due to the plummet in real estate classified revenues. Also, Sam Zell, Tribune’s new owner, is selling some key real estate holdings, including its own headquarters, trying to stabilise the company's finances.

The new venture looks like a trial to rebuild some revenues lost in real estate classifieds harmed by the online migration of listings. For those areas hard-hit by the slump in the housing market, such as Sunbelt areas like Southern California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, the wave of foreclosures is a chance for real estate investors looking for cheap buys during the recession, MediaPost reported.

“Tribune, like all newspaper companies, has to find non-traditional sources of revenue, lines that are not associated with only advertising - pointing to the Washington Post Company's success with Kaplan as an example,” Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst with Outsell Inc., told MediaPost.

However, Doctor warns that “the foreclosure disaster is one of the top stories of the year. The LA Times must recheck its firewall between editorial coverage of foreclosures in the housing turndown and its new business activities. As a newspaper, it owes its readers full, fair and impartial coverage, and the more its parent company branches into businesses that the paper covers, that becomes more difficult,” according to MediaPost.