Monday, March 24, 2008
Al Diamon
MediaNews Group looking at Blethen?
Media Mutt is Maine's Media Watchdog
A reliable source in the newspaper industry says MediaNews Group of Denver, Colo., is in negotiations to buy the Blethen Maine Newspapers, which include the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, as well as other publications and Web sites. The Blethen papers were put up for sale last week (see “Blethen fire sale”) by the parent Seattle Times Co.
According to its Web site (www.medianewsgroup.com), MediaNews Group publishes 57 newspapers in 12 states, including the Denver Post, Los Angeles Daily News and Detroit News. It owns several New England papers, most notably the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts and weeklies in New Hampshire and Vermont. MediaNews is a privately held company with a reputation for focusing on the bottom line. It’s chief executive officer, William Dean Singleton, was once referred to by the New York Times as “the industry’s leading skinflint.”
While Singleton’s exploits include having news staffers at the Fort Worth Press throw beer cans at him when he announced the closure of that paper, he’s also been successful in turning around financially strapped publications, such as the Houston Post. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, his inclination to slash reporting and editing jobs has eased in recent years. In a 2003 profile (www.cjrarchives.org/issues/2003/2/dean-sherman), the magazine quoted a Singleton speech in which he said, “Newsroom cost cuts have gone far enough – perhaps too far.”
Singleton did not return a phone call seeking comment on his possible purchase of the Maine newspapers by the time this story was filed. According to the person who answered the phone in Portland Press Herald publisher Chuck Cochrane’s office, neither he nor anyone else at the Maine papers had any comment.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
Great job beating everyone to the punch Al!
Doubtful, Al - Singleton's already over-reached. And he and Blethen hate each other. It might just come down to economics, the Blethen might sell to recoup massive losses. But there'd be a ton of pride to overcome in that sale ....
Interesting tidbit from the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. In a story about non-profit models for newspapers, Frank Blethen said, “On a local and regional level, independent newspapers are still a nice business, with eight, ten, twelve percent returns. It’s the big public ownership model that’s falling apart.”
(Source: http://www.cjr.org/essay/somewhere_east_of_eden.php?page=3)