Mr. Michaels resigned on Friday, the company said, after weeks of intense media speculation about his future and only after Sam Zell, the chairman of Tribune, personally intervened to urge him to step down. The board appointed an executive council to run the company.

The confusion over Mr. Michaels?s resignation is emblematic of the uncertainty that has plagued Tribune since Mr. Zell bought the media giant in 2007.

During a contentious board meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Michaels made an emotional plea to keep his job and initially had refused to resign, according to two people directly involved in the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The path to this resignation began after an article in The New York Times early this month detailed numerous instances of outlandish, often sexual behavior by Mr. Michaels and other top executives he brought to the company from his days in radio.

In a recent deposition related to the bankruptcy, Maggie Wilderotter, a member of the Tribune board, said she spoke to Mr. Zell shortly after the article was published.

?He of course was disappointed in the article, as I think all of us were, and he and I had a conversation with regard to leadership and the instances that were cited in the article,? she said.

Initially, the board decided to hire the law firm Jones Day to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations raised in the article. This was the second time the board had asked a law firm to investigate Mr. Michaels and some of the associates for offensive behavior.

But after one of Mr. Michaels?s deputies, Lee Abrams, the chief innovation officer, was forced to resign recently after distributing a sexually charged memo to the entire company, the board considered whether Mr. Michaels, too, must go.

According to these people, the board was initially divided, with a faction of four directors arguing for Mr. Michaels?s ouster: William Pate, Jeffrey S. Berg, Mark Shapiro and Ms. Wilderotter.

At the close of the board meeting on Tuesday, nothing was resolved: Mr. Michaels had refused to resign, but plans were already being put in place for a caretaker management team to take over the company.

Finally, according to the two people involved in the matter, Mr. Zell, who knew Mr. Michaels from the radio business and who had hired Mr. Michaels to run Tribune, became convinced that Mr. Michaels should leave, and had a private conversation with him, urging him to resign.

The board had planned to meet via teleconference on Friday, but instead an e-mail was sent by company lawyers to the directors notifying them that Mr. Michaels had indeed submitted his resignation. Mr. Michaels was not given a lucrative severance package beyond six months? worth of his salary and health benefits, and will remain as a consultant for some time.

Bruce Japsen, the health care reporter at The Chicago Tribune, said many employees hoped the resignation would help the company right itself.

?Though it appears to the rank and file in the newsroom that Randy, Lee and the boys attempted to destroy and desecrate the place, there are a lot of great journalists here still doing great work,? he said.

Employees were particularly outraged that even as the company fell into bankruptcy, top managers awarded themselves $57.3 million in court-approved bonuses while 4,200 people lost their jobs and the workers who remained went without raises.

Reporting directly to the board, the executive committee will handle Mr. Michaels?s duties. On the panel are Don Liebentritt, the company?s chief restructuring officer; Nils Larsen, the chief investment officer; Tony Hunter, the president, publisher and chief executive of The Chicago Tribune Company; and Eddy W. Hartenstein, the publisher and chief executive of Los Angeles Times Communications.