Posted on 07/24/2008 2:11:19 PM PDT by abb
SAN DIEGO – The parent company of The San Diego Union-Tribune announced Thursday that it has hired an investment banker to look into the possible sale of the company.
Copley Press engaged the New York-based investment banking firm Evercore Partners, which also represented the publishing company in the sale of newspapers it owned in Los Angeles and in the Midwest in 2006 and 2007.
In a statement, The Copley Press, Inc., cited the tough times in the newspaper industry as its motivation in deciding to explore the company's strategic options.
“The last couple of years have been a difficult period for the newspaper industry, especially those in a real-estate dependent market like San Diego,” Harold W. Fuson Jr., executive vice president of the privately held Copley Press, said in a statement. “We have every reason to believe the business will rebound with the economy, but the uncertainties pose too great a risk to sit still.”
Fuson said that despite the challenges faced by the newspaper industry, “The Union-Tribune's combined newspaper and Web site readership is very strong, reflecting the central role its news coverage will continue to play in the life of our region.
“Home delivery subscribers are holding steady and constitute an indispensable resource for advertisers,” Fuson said.
The newspaper business, like other media industries, has been hit hard by changing media consumption habits and the migration to the Internet as well as a decline in advertising caused by the ongoing economic downturn.
The Union-Tribune has the 21st largest circulation among U.S. daily newspapers, a ranking that has been fairly consistent over recent years. The paper's circulation has fallen in recent years, but still exceeds 300,000 on weekdays and 350,000 on Sundays.
The paper is the product of the merged morning and evening papers, which were merged in 1992. The morning paper, the San Diego Union, began publishing in 1868; the evening paper, the Tribune,began in 1895.
The Union-Tribune Publishing Co. is San Diego County's largest media company, its products reading more than 59 percent of the market each week. It employs more than 1,000 employees at its Mission Valley headquarters and outlying offices.
The company operates SignOnSanDiego, a top local news and entertainment Web site, with more than 3 million unique users in a typical month.
It also publishes Enlace, a weekly Spanish-language newspaper, and Today's Local News, a free local paper distributed in the northern part of the county.
The investment banking firm its parent company has hired, Evercore Partners, advises prominent multinational corporations on mergers, acquisitions restructurings and other strategic corporate transactions.
ping
Personally, I’d hate to see them go, they’ve been a decent source for news down South and on the border.
Joan Copley who lived here in San Diego died a few yrs. back.
Her adopted son David took over from his mother.
I think he likes the money and thats all.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003831638
Copley Seeks to Unload Flagship ‘San Diego Union-Tribune’
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003831647
Huge Volume As Journal Register Shares Hit 3 Cents
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080725-0014-7n25utnews.html
snip
Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists in Washington, D.C., said loss of family ownership often brings a shift from public service to profit.
“This is one of the more disturbing trends of the present time because the strength of American newspapers in the 20th century was the connection between the ownership and the community,” he said.
Newspapers have a higher mission than maximizing the bottom line, Kovach said.
“What a good newspaper does is provide a steady monitor to the political, social and economic behavior of a community,” Kovach said. “By being that monitor, it allows the public to make decisions every day about whether or not the community is functioning in a way they hope it will.
“There is no other institution that does that.”
Today’s “Shoe” for your viewing pleasure ...
http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20080725/stmsho080725.gif
The UT has been nothing but a house organ for the power elite in San Diego. If I want to find out what time a movie is playing, I'll read the UT. If I want to find out what's actually going on, I'll go to blogs, the Daily Transcript, the Business Journal, or talk radio. The UT never was any great shakes, but it's become one of the worst newspapers I've ever read.
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