Billionaire real estate tycoon Sam Zell, who inked a complex $8.2 billion deal to buy media conglomerate Tribune on Monday, said he looks forward to the “fascinating challenge” of turning around an underperforming company in a lagging industry in which he is a newcomer.

“It makes it even more exciting when I see other people haven’t been able to figure it out,” he told Stanford Law and Business School students last night in his first public appearance since the acquisition was announced.

Zell, 65, became the 52nd richest man in America largely by making contrarian investments — snapping up cheap companies when their stars had faded in the eyes of most investors. Some analysts question the wisdom of his designs on Tribune, which owns The Los Angeles Times, 23 television stations and the Chicago Cubs.

“A lot of people didn’t think the rail car business was a good investment. I made a quarter billion dollars. A lot of people thought the container leasing business was a horrific business. I made a half a billion dollars,” Zell said, responding to a question after his hour-long Rock Center for Corporate Governance lecture. “Should I go on, or do you get the message?”

He said a feud between the major shareholders of Tribune had caused internal “warfare” but argued that “Tribune is a collection of truly extraordinary assets with extraordinary brands.”

Zell said he had no editorial agenda for the media company but added that he wants to increase revenues and cut costs while supporting quality journalism.

“The newspapers have to be relevant,” he said. “In many cases over the last 10 years and with the growth of the Internet, as opposed to the newspapers aggressively dealing with that, I think they’ve laid down. That’s what it looks like to me.”

He suggested savings would come from outside the newsroom and hinted that, if the deal goes through, he would try to squeeze more money out of such Internet companies as Google who link to his newspapers’ content.

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do?” he asked. “We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera. That can last for a short time, but it can’t last forever. I think Google and the boys understand that. We’re going to see new deals and new formulas in the media space that reflect the reality of cost benefit.”

“But remember,” he was quick to add, “I’m a newspaper man since Monday, and not even that. Give me two weeks to become a genius.”

Today’s New York Times reports that billionaire David Geffen will have dinner with Zell tonight to discuss a possible spin-off of The Los Angeles Times. But today’s San Jose Mercury News reports that, at a reception before last night’s speech, Zell said he was going to keep Tribune intact.

Zell did not mention the Tribune acquisition during his lecture, which was about corporate governance and the recent $39 billion sale of his company, Equity Office Properties Trust.

He focused on the value of a strong board of directors and decried what he said was increasingly excessive government regulation of public companies, spurred by the landmark 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

“It puts the U.S. markets at a disadvantage to the rest of the world,” he said. “I think it is putting the United States behind the eight ball.”

At one point in his lecture, Zell played a music video recorded to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “Love and Marriage.” University President John Hennessy, who serves on the Google Board of Directors, laughed out loud through the music video, which was highly critical of government interference in public companies.

Zell said he has seen employees crying at their desks because of what he called the law’s frustrating complexity.

“In the end, do you really think you can legislate morality?” he said. “The bottom line is that there is no way to legislate morality. The only way you can is by religion, and I’m very much in favor of separation of company and religion.”