Posted on 05/04/2008 4:17:03 AM PDT by abb
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy, The Post has learned.
One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities, recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company.
The broadsheet is unlikely to shutter its doors, but its creditors, including the banking giant Credit Suisse Group, figure to eventually end up controlling the paper. Down the road, the creditor group could then sell it after dramatically cutting costs.
The private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners, run by former Credit Suisse deal maker Tom Dean, purchased the Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co. in 2006 for $530 million. The New York firm, which put up $100 million of its own money and borrowed the rest, stands to lose its entire investment, sources said.
After Avista bought the company, the firm's partner, OhSang Kwon, was quoted in the paper as saying that Minneapolis-St. Paul was a "good market" and that "this is a good time to be buying newspapers."
That sentiment turned out to be too optimistic, as newspapers nationwide continue to lose readers and advertising dollars continue to migrate online.
Last week, the paper reported that its weekday circulation dropped 6.74 percent, to 321,984, in the six-month period that ended March 31.
Billionaire real-estate mogul Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Co. last year, was recently forced to put Long Island's Newsday, one of its more valuable assets, up for sale in order to meet debt obligations.
And the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, that city's two largest dailies, could meet the same fate as the Star Tribune...
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Could it be that they are all biased to the left?
Thank you for your reply.
I do have to agree with you.
“Why are you so obsessed with the demise of print media?”
....I’m old enough to remember when both the big daily papers were pro-American....and they reinforced your pride in your country....now they try to make you feel ashamed to be an American...when they go down the toilet I’ll be glad.
Thank you for your “News Without Reporters.”
It was an interesting article with which I agree.
No doubt like the worst paper in the nation the Chicago Trib it hates its readers, and it hires affirmative action flunkies to basically write the “old white devil” crap they all learned in college.
We are ecologically sensitive people. Fewer newspapers printed=fewer trees cut=more trees to absorb that nasty greenhouse gas carbon dioxide=less global warming.
You see we are truly looking out for the planet.
If truth be told, it's because the COMICS section was missing and so I decided to visit FR to read some juvenile and inane comments to get my laughs. Thanks for obliging.
Why not?
“Because, in my opinion, the DriveBy media have done more damage to the United States than all the foreign enemies have ever done to us. For the most part, they are a collection of frustrated Marxists who despise what the United States represents - freedom, commerce, rugged individualism, God, family.
They have used their monopoly power of the communications system to try to rot us from the inside out.
I celebrate their demise vociferously.”
Whenever, those who try to destroy our country, our way of life and our families, suffer and then fade away, it is a good thing.
Is this a competitor to the Pioneer Press there?
I love seeing their “chickens come home to roost.”
That will be one of those “good problems.”
Varon, which comments would you say are “inane?”
Hear Hear!
I was just going to say...and “another one bites the dust”...when I read your comment. It gave me pause. You are right. If the newspapers and major media stations go down...then things will be more secretive than ever. Imagine what it would be like if no one was reporting anything - right or left-sided. Though I doubt that will happen, it would be a frightful scenerio. Thanks for giving that thought.
The following one, made by "chainsaw": "Why are you on FR when you should be reading your Sunday morning Minneapolis Star Tribune."
- 7
- And the LORD said to Moses, "Go, get down! For your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.
- 8
- They turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to to it, and said, "This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day. Now the power to determine each day what shall seem important and what shall be neglected is a power unlike any that has been exercised since the Pope lost his hold on the secular mind.
Ben Bradlee (Washington Post editor of Watergate infamy) joins Lippmann in worshiping the false god of man.
JIM LEHRER: Ben Bradlee is one of America's most famous newspaper editors and he believes the practice of journalism is more than a job.
BEN BRADLEE: I don't mean to sound arrogant, but we're in a holy profession.
JIM LEHRER: A holy profession?
BEN BRADLEE: Yeah and the pursuit of truth is a holy pursuit.
50 percent of journalists [say] they have no religion, and some 80 percent rarely ever [go] to church.
bump
Yet they pony up large stacks of money in the hope of achieving exactly what? Losing their entire stake? Because that is what is happening (and will happen) to each and every one of these properties. They are hopelessly obsolete.
This is a interesting point. The only answer I can think of is ego with a capital "E." Many strategic business decisions are made on nothing more than the boss saying, "I want to do thus and so." Then the number crunchers make it come out on paper. That's it.
Look at the guy in England that sunk a billion dollars into Bear Stearns a year ago and turned his billion dollars into a hundred million. That is a fubar by any definition.
Wachovia two years ago bought Golden West Financial, a California-based S&L for $25 billion. Oops!
I think Zell and Rupert are smart men, no doubt. You don't get to be a billionaire if you're stupid. But they are still human and make human ego mistakes. And there is still some prestige in owning name-brand newspapers and strutting about the planet with your chest stuck out.
But that prestige won't be around much longer and it won't translate into anything that will cash at the bank. I look for Zell, et al to be given a lesson in humility soon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.