Al Diamon
Snags Slow Blethen Deal
No sale – yet: A month ago, it appeared the sale of the Blethen Maine Newspapers to Maine Media Investments – a group consisting of former U.S. Sen. William Cohen, developers Michael Liberty and Robert Baldacci, and publisher Richard Connor – was all but certain.
Now, it’s not clear when – or even if – the deal will close.
According to a source close to the negotiations on the MMI side, the two parties have agreed on a price and most other basic provisions of the sale. MMI has also made progress in renegotiating the current labor contract with the Newspaper Guild, the largest union at Blethen.
But new problems keep cropping up.
“We have tentative agreements on lots of things,” said the source. “Just when we get to the point where we’re close, then some new wrinkle develops.”
The problem may be with banks, particularly the banks that hold the loans Blethen used to buy the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel in 1998. The company borrowed about $230 million at that time, a significant portion of which has not yet been paid back.
The source said there’s been progress on a sale in recent days, but added, “There’s some banks pulling strings on both sides.”
Most of that pulling appears to be on Blethen. While MMI’s equity sources were apparently unhappy that the concessions made by the union did not go further, they are said to have accepted the revised contract provisions. But Blethen’s bankers seem far more nervous, possibility because this sale won’t produce enough money to pay off the old loans.
That could be a legitimate concern. Knowledgeable estimates from industry sources indicate Blethen still owes about $100 million on the Maine papers, but MMI is said to be unwilling to pay anything close to that amount. Meanwhile, the Blethen’s flagship paper, the Seattle Times, is struggling financially, making it unlikely the company could cover the difference between the sale price and the loan amount through future revenues.
On Nov. 3, the Times announced it was cutting its staff by about 10 percent, eliminating up to 150 jobs.
It’s the third round of layoffs at the Seattle paper so far this year, and the announcement from the company hinted that more cuts could occur in 2009.
In Maine, the continuing delays in the sale of the Press Herald are said to have left Connor, in particular, frustrated. “I think he would have walked away by now if he hadn’t already spent so much time and money,” said the source.
“We’re perplexed. Every time we think [a deal is] close, it seems to drift away for some niggling reason.”
Not enough questions: The Times Record, the Brunswick daily, and the weekly Forecaster both missed a crucial fact in their coverage of the race for the Topsham Board of Selectmen.
One of the candidates was convicted of manslaughter in 1996 for shaking his infant son to death.
According to a Nov. 1 story in the Portland Press Herald, Paul S. Bennett Jr. served about three years in prison for the crime. He was released in 1999.
The Forecaster didn’t include that fact in its early October profile of the campaign.
The Times Record’s Oct. 31 piece likewise left out this information. Oddly enough, that story isn’t on the paper’s Web site.
Last month, the Kennebec Journal failed to mention West Gardiner legislative candidate Charles Jacques’ conviction for breaking into Portland apartments in its coverage of his candidacy, although the paper included Jacques’ criminal record in a later piece, after it was reported elsewhere.
That’s something the Times Record has yet to do.
It ought to be standard procedure for reporters to ask candidates about any past legal problems. It ought to go without saying that the answers to that question should be double-checked. And it ought to be automatic that when additional information surfaces, even if it turns up in a rival publication, it should be checked out and added to subsequent stories.
Video tryout: The Bangor Daily News appears to be experimenting with a video newscast on its Web site. The brief program called “BDN Now” is hosted by staffer Jeff Tuttle. It showed up on the site late in the day on Nov. 3, but was gone the next morning.
The program, which lasted a couple of minutes, featured one story with video and others illustrated with still photos, all narrated by Tuttle, who looked ill-at-ease.
With good reason. He definitely doesn’t have TV hair.
The paper refused to make such a commitment, calling the Allen tactic “a bizarre and sleazy game.”
Got that right.
Gosh, Garfield, we’re unfair and inaccurate: The Portland Press Herald announced in its Nov. 1 edition that it won’t be carrying the “Doonesbury” comic strip on Nov. 5, the day after the election.
The reason? The strip shows soldiers in Iraq reacting to a Barack Obama victory in the presidential race.
Because the outcome of the election won’t be known until after it’s too late to change the comics page, “the paper’s top editors determined that any content presuming a winner would be in violation of the newspaper’s commitment to fairness and accuracy.”
For the record, the Press Herald’s comics currently feature sentient animals, space aliens and an alternative universe called “Mark Trail” in which no one uses conjunctions. To be fair and accurate, the paper should at least run a disclaimer stating that animals don’t think like humans, there’s no evidence of space aliens and normal people use conjunctions frequently.
Anyone willing to risk bias and error can access the unacceptable “Doonesbury” at this Web site on Nov. 5.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Posted on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
On the Blethen item. The problem is, as it has been from the start, the financing. Why should "the banks" take a haircut on this deal, when that would force them to book their losses, and show they are not quite financially unstable. We see what is happening to underfinanced banks these days. Also as we look at the industry-wide collapse in ad revenues, why should "the banks" have any faith that the Cohen group can do any better than Blethen, especially since the Cohen group is going to require significant financing to modernize the printing plant and get rid of the now archaic and labor-intensive Flexo presses.
"A month ago, it appeared the sale of the Blethen Maine Newspapers to Maine Media Investments – a group consisting of former U.S. Sen. William Cohen, developers Michael Liberty and Robert Baldacci, and publisher Richard Connor – was all but certain."
Perhaps a month ago, your report of a deal being "all but certain" was not correct, and now we are simply closer to the truth.
- Holly Martin
Conner, one of those involved in the deal to buy the Blethen newspaper, now accused of stealing obits for his Pa. paper:
http://scrantontimes.com/articles/2008/11/06/news/sc_times_trib.20081106.a.pg3.tt06lawsuit_s1.2066682_top7.txt
So we are we about to go from a gravedigger running our papers to a grave robber?