Posted on 01/15/2009 6:11:33 PM PST by LdSentinal
The Minneapolis Star Tribune filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Thursday night.
The filing had been anticipated for several months. It follows missed payments to the paper’s lenders, and comes less than two years after a private equity group, Avista Capital Partners, purchased the paper for $530 million.
In its filing, the newspaper listed assets of $493.2 million and liabilities of $661.1 million. The company said it hopes to use bankruptcy to restructure its debt and lower its labor costs.
Like most newspapers, the Star Tribune has experienced a sharp decline in print advertising. Its earnings before interest, taxes and debt payments was about $26 million in 2008, down from about $59 million in 2007 and about $115 million in 2004.
In a statement, Star Tribune publisher Chris Harte said, “We intend to use the Chapter 11 process to make this great Twin Cities institution stronger, leaner and more efficient so that it is better positioned for the future.”
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
...from your pen, to G*d ‘s ear. *grin*
Good. Let the commies at the Red Start freeze the behinds off in Minnesota’s current bout of Global warming!
Hey! How’s that leftist tripe format workin’ for ya?
Oh well for them.
May 4, 2008
Strib Publisher Chris Harte responds to NY Post bankruptcy allegation
From Chris Harte, Star Tribune Publisher:
On Sunday the New York Post reported that the Star Tribune has failed to meet its debt obligations and alleged that we are “on the brink of bankruptcy.”
The facts are that the Star Tribune currently has sufficient liquidity and is current on all its debt payment obligations.
While it is true that we face declining ad revenue—as do most major metropolitan newspapers—we have been working aggressively to get our cost structure in line with current revenue shortfalls. This is the most challenging time our industry has ever faced, so we are in constant and constructive communication with our lenders about the state of our business.
We recently hired the Blackstone Group to help us evaluate alternatives to our current capital structure, but that hardly merits a conclusion that we are near bankruptcy. In fact, Blackstone has substantial expertise in balance sheet restructurings through means other than statutory proceedings like bankruptcy.
It’s important to emphasize that none of the current discussions we are having about our financial structure has any effect on our current operations, which are generating positive cash flow. We are focused on maintaining the high quality of our journalism and community service as we have for the past 140 years.
Chris Harte, Star Tribune Publisher
http://www.startribunecompany.com/company/show_image.php?id=253
The New York Post did this when Murdoch bought it. Don't rermember if they announced it, but they did it.
September 18, 2007
A Ramsey County judge took the extraordinary step of removing a sitting CEO on Tuesday after concluding that Star Tribune Publisher Par Ridder took confidential financial data from his former employer, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and could not be trusted to refrain from using it to further hurt the newspaper.
In a case that paired ethics with the competitive world of newspapers, Judge David Higgs made pointed criticisms of Ridder’s “cavalier” behavior, saying he violated state laws and his “common law duty of confidentiality” in taking the information from the Pioneer Press, the newspaper his family ran for 80 years. He also ordered the Minneapolis paper to pay its competitor’s legal fees, estimated at $5 million.
Chris Harte, a newspaper heir and former president of the Portland newspapers, is considering a challenge to Sen. Susan Collins next year. He’s the first Democrat to publicly declare his interest in the race.
Both Harte and Fiori are businessmen with plenty of money and Democratic party credentials.
Harte has worked on numerous Democratic campaigns across the country, including Edmund Muskie’s 1972 presidential campaign. He’s been a fund-raiser for Rep. Tom Allen and Dick Spencer, an unsuccesful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress.
Second page, first column, second paragraph reads "Politically the Tribune will yield a hearty, generous, unwavering support to the Republican party-the party represented by the majority in the 39th and 40th congress-the party which, during its brief history, has done so much for human progress, and been instrumental in abolishing one of the worst forms of despotism known to any civilized people, and through whose policy millions of chattels have been converted from mere pieces of property into free and independent American citizens."
How far this publication has strayed from its original expression.
For most of their posted articles, the Strib has a comment section, but on this article they did NOT have a comment section. So I put my comments about them being heartless capitalists who have no compassion for their union laborers on 4 or 5 of their other posted articles. Hypocrites!!
Yeah!! Dinosaur death watch!
Star and sickle going down!
They had them enabled for a little while and there were some real GEMS! They disabled comments shortly thereafter
The Moonie owned Washington Times. The Morris chain is comparatively conservative (Jacksonville, Savannah, Athens, Augusta, a few other cities). I'm not sure how they are doing these days.
And long may they moulder in an unmarked journalistic grave.
TEARS OF JOY
Another one bites the dust.... * grin *
so I take it you don’t like them much?
Franken lost his propaganda machine in MN
That’s too bad.
Why couldn’t it have been a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy?
Anything about abandoning insisting on teaching us all to think in the Eurosocialist mode or abandoning its historical urinalism practices?
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