On (not) building for the future

What a strange sentence Richard Pérez-Peña wrote in describing the problems faced by the Chicago Sun-Times in finding a buyer. From tomorrow's New York Times:

The Chicago Sun-Times is the kind of trophy that once appealed to deep-pocketed buyers. It has a big audience in a big market, a storied name, and stars like Roger Ebert and Robert Novak.

Ebert, as you probably know, has been battling brain [sorry; that was his on-air reviewing partner the late Gene Siskel] cancer for many years, and can no longer speak, though he continues to write. Novak, who's 76, just announced that he has a brain tumor.

It's not disrespectful to point out that no newspaper executive would buy the Sun-Times thinking he'd have Ebert and Novak in his stable for any length of time. Pérez-Peña knows this. What were he — and his editors — thinking?