Tribune Co.'s debt holders — two investment firms and a bank — will become majority owners of the company after it exits bankruptcy, which could happen by year's end. News Corp. executives have had preliminary talks with these debt holders about acquiring the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, according to two ranking News Corp. executives and others familiar with the situation.
These people cautioned that talks are in the early stages, and that a deal is by no means certain. Other potential buyers have expressed interest.
Murdoch heads the world's largest news company, which includes the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London.
Acquiring the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune would give him strong footholds in the nation's three largest media markets: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Murdoch's lieutenants say he has long wanted to buy The Times. On trips to Los Angeles, he is known to mark up the newspaper with a Sharpie pen to illustrate how he would design pages.
News Corp. and Tribune Co. have existing business ties. Tribune owns 23 television stations, including nine that carry the programming of News Corp.'s two broadcast networks. Tribune stations in San Diego, Sacramento and five other markets are Fox network affiliates.
The Los Angeles Times also prints more than 100,000 copies of the Wall Street Journal that are distributed in Southern California, and the Tribune prints the Journal in Chicago.
Still, regulatory concerns and potential rival bids could stand in the way of an acquisition by a Murdoch-controlled publishing company.
Oh, my God! I hope he buys them.
You people are crazy if you think Murdoch wants a conservative paper.
The WSJ is not conservative except its op-ed page, sometimes.
Today the WSJ is running interference for Obama on Benghazi apparently
I was once by the Los Angeles Times.
Murdoch to by Chicago Trib and LA Times?
by - buy - bye
Rupert Murdoch, other potential buyers eye L.A. Times
Sorry. I can’t help it. Spent too many years working for daily and weekly newspapers.
Though I’ve never passed by Chicago tribunes.
I hope they understand the difference in buy and by.
Why not post the real title? Serving your own agenda.
I don’t want the LA Times to be a bastion of conservatism. I don’t want it to be the bastion of liberalism it currently is either. What I want is for it to provide fair, unbiased coverage as it did in the distant past.
One famous LA journalist who spoke to my class back in high school put the same point to us multiple ways, one my favorites being, “If someone can tell your personal political bias from the article you wrote, you didn’t do your job right.”