Hazlehurst’s Blog
Insight and commentary from John Hazlehurst

Who will buy the Gazette?

4

The Gazette’s parent, Freedom Communications, is expected to exit from bankruptcy within six weeks. Under the company’s plan for reorganization, secured creditors led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. will own all of the company’s equity.

That won’t last. The banks must, by law, divest themselves of their interests in the company within five years. In practice, they’ll probably move a lot faster.

As a company, Freedom, like Topsy, “jest grew.” It owns dozens of far-flung, diverse, and unrelated media properties. The company owns a bunch of little papers in a remote part of west Texas, ditto in Florida, ditto in South Carolina, a random assortment of TV and radio stations, the Gazette, and a sluggish newspaper in southern California, the Orange County Register.

Of the company’s just-appointed six member all-male board of directors, four are private equity guys. Board chair James Dunning heads the Dunning Group, “a private media group which specializes in media leveraged buyouts.”

Director Ross Levinsohn “is a founding and managing director of Fuse Capital, which invests in digital media and communications.”

Sean Moriarty works at the Mayfield Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital group. Mitchell Stern is a consultant who worked for Murdoch, and subsequently ran DirecTV.

Aside from interim CEO Burl Osbourne, who took over for Scott Flanders (presently Playboy’s CEO) when Freedom declared bankruptcy, there’s only one newspaper guy on the board-Donald Grenesko, who was CFO of the Tribune company until 2008.

These are guys who know how to buy and sell media properties, not operate them for the long term. There’s a lot of high-level expertise there, and it’s reasonable to expect that the new board will move swiftly to sell off the company, piece by piece.

Why so? Because owning old media nowadays is like owning a pay telephone company 15 years ago. The companies are still throwing off some cash, still have strong market niches, but time is not on their side. It’s best to get rid of Freedom’s unwieldy corporate structure, spin off individual properties to local owners, take the money and run.

Both current Gazette publisher Steve Pope and Independent owner/publisher John Weiss are, according to the usual unreliable sources, trying to put together investor groups to make an offer for the gray lady of Prospect Street.

Will either succeed? Will they team up in a Colorado Springs variant of “The Odd Couple?” Will the Gazette be spun off to another media group, such as Gannett or Media News Group?

Who knows? But one thing is certain-the Gazette will find new owners, and it’s doubtful that the new owners will stick with the paper’s proudly eccentric editorial policy. Unless, of course, our unpredictable new councilman, Sean Paige, can round up some moneyed ideologues to preserve Ayn Rand’s tattered temple.

Otherwise, prepare for the end of days!

R.C. Hoiles? Who’s he? Libertarianism? Did you mean vegetarianism?

Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 4th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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Comparing headlines and the Gazette’s stealth missile

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Headline on the Gazette’s Web site this morning:

“Tax hikes signed by Ritter.”

Headline on the Denver Post Web site this morning:

“Ritter signs bills to end tax breaks, help balance budget.”

Are we looking at bias here? The Gazette trends right, the Post trends left. Do the headlines mirror the editorial positions of the newspapers?

I doubt it. Both headlines are factual and defensible, if not absolutely even-handed. And ideology has little to do with the craft of headline writing. If you think it’s hard to write a pithy tweet, or to compose a graceful haiku, try summarizing an 800-word story in five to nine words. It’s a delightful craft, one which can only be mastered by long practice. “Hicks nix stix flix” and “Headless body in topless bar” - two examples of reality providing an occasion for genius to meet inspiration.

But for folks who believe that daily newspaper coverage is driven by political agendas, grudge-settling and hidden biases, there’s always evidence of slanted coverage - just as there’s abundant evidence that Denver International Airport is the site of a vast, hidden secret guv’mint project, complete with subterranean tunnels to Cheyenne Mountain.

But it does appear that the Gazette has in fact launched a secret project aimed at uncovering the shenanigans of certain powerful folks in our community.

A couple of months ago, the G assigned a new reporter to cover the County Commission and, it appears, to report upon the antics of a certain Douglas Bruce.

Eileen Welsome has the kind of unthreatening persona that is so valuable to an investigative reporter. She’s quiet, persistent and unrelenting. She’s already written some great pieces about the county, and has so annoyed the commissioners that Gazette editor Jeff Thomas has had to endure a meeting with at least one indignant elected official.

But it seems that neither the Dougster nor our eminent elected officials have bothered to Google Welsome. One commissioner characterized her as “not understanding anything,” and ”asking lots of ignorant questions,” and “filing all these CORA (Colorado Open Records Act) requests.”

But maybe she understands more than the commissioners give her credit for - and maybe her employer is expecting great things from her.

A few years back, Welsome won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting while working as a reporter for the Albuquerque Tribune. The series of stories covered the experience of Americans who were unknowingly research subjects of government radiation experiments, according to the Pulitzer Prize Web site.

To find that the “G” has hired Welsome as a beat reporter is a little surprising. It’s as unlikely as seeing Jeff Beck lay down riffs with the local boys at Southside Johnny’s … but maybe it’s just a sign of the times.

After all, if the music business were as problematic as the newspaper industry, our local garage band would be fronting Clapton, not Beck.

Posted by John Hazlehurst on February 25th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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Colorado Springs: Battlefield of liberals, conservatives

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There’s nothing better than a good, old-fashioned left/right bloodbath, especially when it involves our own fair city.

Lefty commentator David Sirota started the ball rolling with a bitingly snarky column in the Post, which also ran in the Gazette, characterizing Colorado Springs as “a shining example of what happens to a community when conservatives’ anti-tax policies are distilled into their most pure form …”

And if you think that’s a little mean, he was just getting started. He continues: “The next time you hear a conservative prattle on about how much he/she hates taxes and how the solution to all problems in America is to cut taxes, remember Colorado Springs. It is the anti-tax zealot’s nirvana - and it shows what America would look like if our politics continue to be dominated by the me-first, screw-everyone-else crowd and their tax-hating ways.”

Former Gazette editorial page editor, and present city councilmember Sean Paige promptly rose to the defense of our cruelly maligned, not-quite metropolis.

No doubt inspired by the absence of editorial constraints (“Paige, you have 800 words, and that’s it!”), Sean’s indignant piece in the Huffington Post ran on for nearly 1,900 words.

Characterizing the city’s current funding crisis as “a budget crunch…no different than (those currently experienced by) most American cities,” Paige claimed that the city is “…leagues ahead, in terms of livability and quality of life, of most places from which the ideological sniping comes.”

And Sirota? “Typical of the slams was this post by David Sirota in the Denver Huffington Post, which shows that he doesn’t know anything more about Colorado Springs than he knows about the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Here’s Sirota, spewing stupid.”

After listing all of  the “best places” awards that the city has won, and taking aim at those pesky, ill-informed lib’ruls, Sean concludes by saying, “Maybe what really infuriates liberals about Colorado Springs is that it demonstrates that you can have a great American city without the need for a great big government running things; that you can keep taxes in check and still deliver an outstanding quality of life; that people here will step up to do for themselves, the things government can’t or shouldn’t be doing for them. This town remains a magnet for transplants because it keeps the American dream affordable and attainable, by actually putting America’s limited government ideals into practice. Take all the pot shots you want, liberals, but Colorado Springs will get through this fiscal crunch and emerge on the other side stronger and better than ever.”

Sirota, no slouch as an incendiary, opinionated writer, replied in kind.

In yesterday’s Huffington Post, Sirota leveled both barrels at Paige, characterizing everything he said as arising from the “eternal delusions of the right-wing mind.”

“Paige says Colorado Springs attracts new residents and economic growth ‘by actually putting America’s limited government ideals into practice.’ In this, he asks us to forget that one of the city’s biggest employers is the defense industry - that is, an industry that has absolutely nothing to do with ‘limited government’ and everything to do with the hugest of Huge Government. Whether you support this Huge Government or not - whether you think it is a good or bad thing - it’s size and centrality to the Colorado Springs economy is undeniable, as is its antithesis to the concept of ‘limited’ or small government. You don’t have to trust me, the guy who Paige calls a ’statist’ (do people even use that red-baiting McCarthy-esque word anymore?). You can look at the $700 billion annual defense budget.”

OK, you two - just shut up. You’re both wrong.

You both see this city as through the distorting lens of your particular and quirky ideologies, and make the facts fit your own preconceptions.

Sean: David’s right. We contributed to this mess by embracing Doug Bruce’s taxophobia. And those “best places” rankings are highly dubious. For example, are we really one of the most drunken cities in America, as a recent survey seemed to show? And is Boston the least drunk? Or are the rankings derived from dubious metrics? And yeah, we’re more dependent upon guv’mint payrolls than any city in America … except Washington, D.C.  Volunteerism is fine - but who’s gonna patch the potholes?  Not me.

David: Sean’s right. With all its faults, the city’s a great place to live, and despite our current travails, is likely to stay that way. You can rant all you want about our problems,but we’re very far from being the poster child for American urban dysfunction. And besides, we’re the city every journalist dreams of - a city run by newspaper guys!

Journalists are former city councilmembers, and city councilmembers are former journalists. And we know that Colorado Springs taxpayers have always wised up eventually. They may load the gun, cock it and aim at their foot - but they never quite squeeze the trigger. And you may think that Sean’s a crazed, delusional right-winger, but he’s changed.

He used to be a crazed, delusional right-wing journalist, but now he’s a respected, comparatively moderate community leader … a role model for you!

Posted by John Hazlehurst on February 9th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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Journalism awards: We won! We won! We hope…

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To most of us, January may be a kind of a dead zone - the dreariest, coldest and nastiest month.

The holidays are over, the kids are back in school, you feel as if you’re getting a cold, and the car barely starts in the morning. Need a new car? Too bad - you’re broke. Try to remember last September, and you can’t - any more than you can imagine a new spring (tentatively scheduled for April.)

But for journalists, it’s time of hope.

It’s contest time! Yup, you may be stuck in a dying industry in the depth of winter, but at least you can enter a journalism contest, and maybe even get an award or two.

State and regional contests, such as those sponsored by the Colorado Press Association and the Society of Professional Journalists feature a dozen or more categories and scores of awards for different circulation classes. In practice, it’s kind of like kindergarten. Work hard; go to class; pay attention to your teacher (i.e. editor) and you’ll get a good conduct ribbon.

The awards are given out at annual banquets, where the little guys from papers such as CSBJ get to hang out with the big dogs from the Denver Post or the Deseret News, trade gossip, flirt and hopefully pick up an award or two. It costs a few bucks to enter, but the publisher obligingly picks up all the costs.

For us at CSBJ, though, the best awards are those given out by our parent company, Dolan Media, which sponsors an annual intracompany competition among the company’s 30-plus publications. The award certificates are particularly nice - and, more importantly, the winners get a nice chunk of cold, hard cash!

There are, of course, other more prestigious awards out there - but I think we’ll just leave ‘em alone.

We could, for example, respond to this invitation.

“Dear Media Colleague,

On behalf of UCLA Anderson School of Management and the G. and R. Loeb Foundation, I would like to invite you to participate in the 2010 Loeb Awards call for entries. The Loeb Awards are the most prestigious honor in business journalism. Our mission is to recognizing writers, editors and producers who make significant contributions to the understanding of business, finance and the economy for both the private investor and the general public.”

Previous award winners have all come from big media - the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, and the like. No surprise there - the “distinguished panel of judges” who will evaluate entries are senior editors at the WSJ, at Bloomberg, the NYT and peer pubs. And just to make sure that no-hopers from pipsqueak local pubs should keep their distance, each entry will set you back $100. Now that’ll keep the riff-raff out - it’s bottle service only at the Loeb Awards!

And, of course, there’s the highest mountain of all - the Pulitzer Prize. Win it, and it’ll identify you for the rest of your life - your obit will lead with “Pulitzer Prize winner…”

Every year, a small market paper manages to snag a Pulitzer - and this might just be the year that Gazette reporter Dave Philipps snags the big one for his superb series on returning war veterans.

Should he win, Dave will get a check for $10,000.

Dave, let me join Susan Edmondson in being among the first to congratulate you! Let me remind you that I spoke at your high school graduation, and that Susan gave you your first job in the newspaper biz. Inspiration plus employment - yes, that means we’d be happy to accept a glass or two of champagne in thanks! A magnum of Cristal would be perfectly acceptable…after all, Dom Perignon is so vulgar, don’t you think?

<- Back to csbj.com

Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 12th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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It’s not easy to subscribe to the Gazette

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If you’ve ever considered subscribing to the Gazette, now’s the time … maybe.

My subscription ended on New Year’s Eve, since I had ignored several missives advising me to re-up or no longer get the G tossed on the porch every morning. Tried to renew online - no luck, since the site wanted my “subscription number” and my password before it would allow me to subscribe. No answer at the 800 number, so I gave up.

But I persisted! Yesterday, I plunked down $1.50 and picked up a copy of the paper at my neighborhood convenience store, expecting that the Sunday newspaper/coupon delivery system would have a subscription offer therein.

And it did - not just one, but two.

If you want to subscribe for 13 weeks, you can get just the Sunday edition for $1.61 per week - 11 cents more than the newsstand price. You also get access to something they call the Green Edition, which is a slightly enhanced version of what you can already get for free online.

Another, completely separate offer card gives you the option of having the Gazette delivered every day for $1.92. If the Sunday paper accounts for $1.61 of the package, you’re getting the other six days for 31 cents.

So rejoice! Happy days are here again! You can buy a daily newspaper for a nickel!

Or so it seems. Just as the circulation war between the Rocky and the Post, which featured offers of 52 weeks for $3.65 (a penny per day!), foreshadowed the end of the Rocky, so too may the Gazette’s latest promotion signal an uncertain future.

A local businessman with long experience in Colorado print media, speaking off the record, gave this assessment of the Gazette’s prospects.

“Ten years ago,” he said, “The Gazette had real circulation of more than 100,000, and revenue of around $90 million, with EBITDA as high as 39 percent. Today, the circ is closer to 60,000, and the stated margins might be 6 percent - but those margins aren’t real, because they’ve degraded the product so much to maintain any margin at all. There’s still value there - but for how long? All the indicators are moving the wrong way.”

Maybe so - but I need my G! One problem - the fine print says that the $1.92 offer is only “for those who have not been a scubscriber [sic] in the past 30 days.”

Oh well …

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 11th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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Gazette’s FreshInk gets less ink - like most newspapers these days

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The Gazette has abandoned its ambitious plans to publish its FreshInk as a four-day per week free tabloid newspaper and instead has relegated it to a once-a-week insert.

FreshInk, launched during April of this year, was the brainchild of Gazette publisher Steve Pope, who reportedly told his staff at the time that FreshInk was intended to both compete with the Colorado Springs Independent for younger readers and to eventually become a zoned publication available throughout the region.

At the time, some speculated that Pope had created FreshInk specifically as an Independent-killer, in revenge for that paper’s revelations concerning his fudged resume when he first joined the Gazette.

But I don’t think that was ever the plan - the Gazette, like many floundering dailies, was struggling with the recession and with a swiftly changing business environment.

The Gazette’s parent, now-bankrupt Freedom Communications, had tried the same strategy with its publication in Mesa, Arizona, the East Valley Tribune. The strategy didn’t work, and Freedom announced plans to close the paper unless a buyer could be found. Apparently, there’s a buyer in the wings, and freedom has deferred plans for shutting the pub down pending the bankruptcy court’s approval of the proposed deal.

When launched, FreshInk was published with racked distribution throughout Manitou, the west side, and downtown Colorado Springs. During July, a zoned edition of the paper began distribution in Fountain.

But, it appeared that few businesses chose to advertise in FreshInk.

The paper had formidable competitors, including the Independent and the West Side Pioneer, Ken Jordan’s feisty neighborhood weekly, which routinely scoops every other news medium in the city.

During the last two months, FreshInkhad shrunk from 16 pages to 12, and most ads were so-called ‘house ads’, for which little or no compensation was received. And two weeks ago, the paper announced that it would henceforth be available three days weekly, rather than four.

In a curiously-worded announcement in the Gazette yesterday morning, FreshInk editor Tim Bergsten announced that “changes are coming to the Gazette’s citizen journalism platform…it’s natural to shy away from change, to assume that it’s going to be bad.”

“Beginning Jan. 6,” Bergsten continued, “FreshInk will print Wednesdays. On Feb. 3 we’ll launch two more neighborhood papers (serving the Powers Boulevard and Briargate areas). All four neighborhood papers will be delivered in the Gazette to home subscribers.”

In retrospect, it’s easy to say that FreshInk was doomed from day one, a bad idea that somehow implanted itself in the mind of a stubborn boss.

Maybe so - but it takes a certain amount of journalistic chutzpah to launch a print pub of any kind in today’s market, and FreshInk was often interesting and readable. Many observers believe that metro dailies are a dying breed, doomed to follow passenger pigeons and passenger trains into extinction - so I applaud the Gazette for at least trying something, rather than passively accepting what fate may bring.

“Stand by,” Liz Cobb, the Gazette’s Vice President of Marketing said, “More changes are coming.”

And change, if inevitable, is not always good.

When ‘The City of New Orleans’ immortalized passenger rail 40 years ago, Colorado Springs had two competing dailies, as did Denver, as did San Francisco, as did Seattle. America’s network of passenger trains had largely disappeared, leaving only a few faded reminders of a glorious past. Trains were made for songwriters - and newspapers are made by writers.

I suspect that dozens of laid-off journalists are banging away at their keyboards as I write this, hoping to write the book that will define and celebrate the end of journalism as we knew and lived it.

Good luck. And I know you’ve given up on fortune - but don’t expect fame either. Here’s the chorus from ‘The City of New Orleans’, which was written not by Arlo Guthrie, not by Willie Nelson…but by Steve Goodman.

“Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.”

<-Back to CSBJ.com

Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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WSJ blogs about Hoiles, Freedom

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Peg Brickley’s blog on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site might be of interest to Colorado Springs residents.

Titled “Bankruptcy Beat,” it’s devoted to Springs resident Tim Hoiles, who reportedly cashed out his 8.6 percent stake in the family business, Freedom Communications, which owns the Gazette, for a cool $142 million. He’s sitting pretty - and that’s why unsecured creditors, including a lawyer he once employed, of the now-bankrupt company are snapping at his heels

Here’s a sample from the blog:

“If creditors of Freedom Communications are hoping to recoup “illegal dividends” from Timothy C. Hoiles, motorcycle aficionado, patron of the arts and ex-scold of the family who owns the company, good luck to them… Creditors haven’t named any names when it comes to insiders who could be tagged with lawsuits, and Hoiles cashed out years before the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in September.”

Click here to read the blog.

Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 9th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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No joy in Gazette layoffs

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It was dismaying to read some of the vengeful comments on the Gazette’s Web site this morning, as readers reacted to a news story published Friday about yet more layoffs at the daily.

The trolls were out in force, leveling all sorts of bitter criticisms at the paper. They attacked its editorial philosophy, its inherent biases toward left and right (nice trick if you can do it!), its failure to support community initiatives, its supposedly incompetent reporting and its bankrupt out-of-town owners.

Compared to the Post, the Gazette suffers. But it’s still a good paper, with smart, competent reporters, an interesting and delightfully combative editorial page and a daily feast of news and information that no other medium can match.

But let’s say that the trolls are right, and that the Gazette richly deserves its present fate. The paper has shed 40 percent of its employees during the last three years, so if present trends continue the Gazette will cease publication within the next couple of years. That’ll teach ‘em, right?

Those of us who compete with the ‘G’ might profit by its demise, but the city would be severely damaged. Even in this era of declining circulation, reduced advertising revenue, and shrunken editorial staffs, metro dailies serve communities in ways that no other medium can replace or duplicate.

Consider the breadth, depth, and continuing coverage of daily newspapers, which still define, celebrate, criticize, investigate, and breathe life into cities. There’s not a single local print publication, Web site, or blog that has the resources to do the kind of journalism that the daily does every day-and often does very well.

Every sizeable city in America has been defined by its daily newspaper(s) for at least a century. If that era is coming to an end, what will replace the dailies?

Conventional wisdom suggests that newspapers will endure on the Web. Maybe they will, but as skeleton organizations, stripped of the revenue and resources that now power their sites.

The Gazette, even in its present diminished state, employs scores of reporters and editors. Those men and women create the stories, the multiple sections, and the continuous updates that make the site worth visiting. Absent the revenue generated by print, the Web site couldn’t support such an editorial staff. The Web site would become one of many, constantly under attack by anklebiters trying to carve out specialty niches on the local Web, and bring in slivers of revenue.

It’s hard to imagine Colorado Springs without the Gazette. Much of what would pass for news would be incomplete, partial, biased, and inaccurate.

Absent the gray lady of Prospect Street, absurd rumors would proliferate, local governments would cheerfully do whatever they pleased, and the TV stations would (horror of horrors!) have to do their own reporting.

If the ‘G’ disappears, its employees will suffer for a while. They’ll find new jobs-but where will we find a new daily? Not in the unmediated, angrily partisan snark of the Web - and not in the pages of free community weeklies.

The old era passeth - and the new has yet to be born.

And for all of you trolls - where are you going to post comments?

<-Back to CSBJ.com

Posted by John Hazlehurst on November 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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Freedom bankruptcy may cause local FCC problem

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Here’s yet another twist in the convoluted saga of the bankruptcy filing of the Gazette’s parent, Freedom Communications.

In the palmy days of yore, JP Morgan Chase, Freedom’s largest secured creditor, apparently had an insatiable appetite for short-term debt issued by now-forlorn media titans.  The bank is also the lead secured creditor of two other media bankrupts, the Tribune Company and the Journal Register Company.  To add to Morgan’s woes, the bank is also the largest creditor of Citadel Communications, which describes itself as the “largest pure radio play” in the investment universe.

Citadel’s not feeling the love any more, as advertising revenue has plummeted during the recession, so the company is negotiating with Morgan and other secured lenders to convert $2 billion in debt to equity.

That creates a series of complex legal dilemmas for Morgan, particularly in the Colorado Springs market.

Rules enforced by the Federal Communications Commission generally prohibit cross-ownership of media in a market when such ownership would create, or be likely to create,  a monopoly.  Here in Colorado Springs, Citadel owns six radio stations (KATC, KCSF, KKFM, KKMG, KKPK, and KVOR), twice as many as does competitor Clear Channel, and has a substantial chunk of the local advertising market.

So what happens when/if Morgan emerges as the de facto owner of both the Gazette and of Citadel’s local stations?  The bank would have to clear its ownership with the FCC.  In theory, the FCC could require that the bank immediately divest itself of certain such overlapping properties, which occur in a number of markets served by both Citadel and one of the three bankrupt media companies. 

Colorado Springs may be a particularly egregious case, since it would be hard to argue that ownership of a monopoly daily newspaper and six local radio stations would not tend to create a local communications monopoly, to the detriment of both competitors and the public.   

It’s possible-even likely-that the clever lawyers and investment bankers that represent Morgan will figure out structures that will satisfy the FCC, at least in the short run.  But in the long run (and “long” means within a year or so), Morgan and its fellow creditors will have to bring their ownership positions into regulatory compliance.

If, after a year, Morgan owns/controls both Citadel and Freedom, the bank might solve its FCC problems by selling either the radio stations or the Gazette to local investors.  Morgan might find lots of potential buyers, particularly if they offered attractive terms-for example, no money down, no payments for 90 days, free checking, and a six-slice toaster!

 

  

Posted by John Hazlehurst on September 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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Bankrupt Gazette parent to sell Arizona newspapers

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As I speculated, the Gazette’s bankrupt parent company, Freedom Communications, has begun the process of shedding assets.

The East Valley Tribune reported yesterday:

“Freedom Communications, parent company of the East Valley Tribune, has asked a bankruptcy court judge to allow the company to hire a broker in order to pursue the possible sale of the Tribune and several other Valley publications it owns.

The filing is part of the ongoing proceedings related to Freedom’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing earlier this month to allow a restructuring of the company’s debt.

Officials for Freedom, based in Irvine, Calif., would only confirm that the filing seeking a broker took place. A potential buyer was not specified.

In addition to the Tribune, Freedom publishes the Sun City Daily News-Sun, Ahwatukee Foothills News and the Clipper coupon booklet in the Phoenix area. The company also publishes the Yuma Sun.”

Our sister publication, the Arizona Capitol Times, had earlier revealed that negotiations concerning a possible sale were under way prior to the bankruptcy filing. Whether this possible deal signals the beginning of a fall fire sale, with dozens of Freedom’s marginal properties on the block, or whether it’s just the continuation of business as usual should be clear within a few weeks.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to buy a nice mid-market daily, just call Freedom Communications. They’re in the book…

Posted by John Hazlehurst on September 18th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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