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...
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(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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As FReepers we've read endless excerpts from this paper to know the folks who run it are definitive of the concept of "open treason". Sure, they'll slither off and find new outlets to express their hatred of our nation, but there will be one less voice signing in the "Red Choir". And that's always good news...
Cheers!
Why are you so obsessed with the demise of print media?
One by one. CBS, NBC, ABC to follow!
He probably is old enough to remember when some newspapers were not owned by America-hating socialists.
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.
“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.””
OhSang Kwon is also eyeing big investments in the steam engine, the telegraph and the camera film industries.
Way back in the mists of time...
I must getting old, I remember those days.
Why are you on FR when you should be reading your Sunday morning Minneapolis Star Tribune. because you get the facts not their opinion of what thy want you to know.
Within two years, Dimocrats will propose federal funding of the dinosaur media.
Just goes to show that Liberalism wil get you nowhere.
Schadenfreude.
OhSang Kwon......Betcha that dude never swept a floor or ate in a lunchroom! probably think a TACO is a Rotting egg roll!
If enough newspapers start going belly-up, where will FR get its news to discuss?
Things are really bad when a Marxist newspaper can’t make it in a Marxist state. Looked like a good buy when Avista got it for almost half of what it was supposed to be worth. Goodbyyyyyyeeeeeee.
Maybe if you wrote unbiased news, it would circulate more....
No one in Minnesota with an ounce of brains pays any attention to the Strib anymore. Even the letters to the Editor show that only liberals are reading it. I see this paper occasionally when I fill-in at the local clinic, and ti amazes me what the readers are thinking. They are all left wing loonies.
I think maybe the paper receives about 1-2 conservative leters per month, and usually in support of Katherine Kerstien, who write good oped pieces.
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