WP: A Push Toward Private Control of Newspapers

[DeepModem Mom]

A Push Toward Private Control of Newspapers
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 17, 2006; Page D01

The recent breakup of the Knight Ridder Inc. newspaper chain has helped spark interest around the country in returning papers to local or private ownership after decades of expansion by corporate media conglomerates.

For example, the Philadelphia Inquirer left Knight Ridder for local ownership, and local groups in Los Angeles and Baltimore are mounting efforts to provoke sales of those cities' papers.

The newspaper business was relatively stable over the last half of the 20th century, controlled by a handful of chains that steadily added newspapers and recorded profit margins of 10 percent to as much as 30 percent. Now, after two decades of circulation decline that have led to strife in boardrooms, some of the very precepts that stabilized the business -- newspapers should be owned by publicly held companies, local ownership is limiting, and bigger is better -- are being repudiated....The upheaval started last fall, when a major shareholder of the venerable Knight Ridder chain began urging the board to break up the company, saying shareholders were not getting the best value out of their stock.

The roiling has spread to the boardroom of the Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other papers and television stations. There, members of the Chandler family -- Tribune's second-largest shareholder and onetime owners of the Los Angeles Times -- are warring with other directors, urging the company to break up. The issue: The board authorized a stock buyback, which would cost the company millions of dollars in new debt, and the family fears losing the value of their stock. Anxiety in the Chandler family may be valid: On Thursday, Moody's Investor Services cut the $10 billion Tribune Co.'s credit rating to "junk" status.

The Baltimore Sun reported yesterday that the local Abell Foundation is using the uncertainty to urge Tribune Co. to sell the Sun...."Suddenly, we have all this turmoil," said newspaper analyst John Morton. "Ultimately, when all of this is done, a number of papers will end up in private hands."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601842.html

[ixion]

1. yeah, but gee, the FCC seems to be going the other way

:eyes:

[Nay]

2. Here's a chance for some of those rich Dems to buy up newspapers.

Anybody wanna bet they will? Isn't there one Soros/Turner type person who would buy a newspaper chain and run it at a loss to add a Dem voice to the news media? Anyone? That's how that Moonie idiot got a paper in DC to spew the RW line. It seems to work for them, why not us?