Sam Zell will not be drinking at the Redwood Friday night.

About to return to the East Coast for his new gig at the Wall Street Journal, and emailing his goodbyes in a memo to his soon-to-be former colleagues at the L.A. Times Thursday (obtained by LA Observed [1]), Pulitzer Prize-winning car critic Dan Neil had kind words for the paper which he said “saved” him when it hired him in 2002 after a nasty divorce.

Conversely, Neil — who is involved in a class-action suit against Tribune for alleged mismanagement of retirement funds — delivered the equivelent of a single-finger solute to parent-company brass in Chicago.

Here’s the memo:

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