How about the citizens of Utah getting together to buy the Tribune at its current bargain basement value?
Via State Senator Jim Dabakis:
Via State Senator Jim Dabakis:
Apparently, the Tribune is for sale. It WOULD have been an attractive money maker without all the shenanigans over the last year. Now, potential buyers tell me the Tribune is worth very, very little. Much of the value has been sucked out Utah's proud independant voice! But, there is a way to save an independent Trib and assure two papers in Utah for a long, long time.
The historic revenue split between the Tribune and the Deseret News was 70%-30% (based on circulation and revenues). But that has changed. Dramatically. With Clark Gilbert's Deseret News' payoff to the NY Hedge Fund that owns the Trib, it leaves the Trib as a very junior partner with an unsustainable financial split of just 30%.
Plus, instead of the long standing 50-50 split of control of the joint operating company, with the new agreement, the smaller Deseret News gains control. Having lost 50% of its profit to the D News, and lost say over distribution, promotion and printing of the papers, serious potential buyers have told me that only a shill would buy the Tribune now, UNLESS the DOJ or the Courts step in. The ugly new agreement that gave the Hedge Fund millions from the Deseret News must be reversed.
Was the fact that the Trib was stripped of its sale value before it was put on sale to possible independent buyers (like the McCarthey Family for instance) just a coincidence?
Here is a link to the Denver Post story:Everything Digital First Media has touched has been run into the ground, but the fatcat ownership of the Alden Capital Hedge Fund still manage to always collect fat paychecks, partially at the Trib readership's expense.
How about the citizens of Utah getting together to buy the Tribune at its current bargain basement value and create a trust that would create autonomy in the newsroom and guarantee that we have professional journalism in this state now and for decades to come?
As Mr. Dabakis notes, the new anti-trust-violative DNews-Trib joint operating agreement would possibly have to be somehow voided, of course., hopefully by mutual agreement, if the price is right, of course..
Just a thought.
3 comments:
This sounds like what Bane Capital did to the companies it bought, ran into the ground, and then dumped.
I just navigated to Senator Dabakis's Utah State Senate profile, to get his phone number. His liswted phone number returns to a g-mail link. What an ASSHOLE!
Definition of newspaper hell: having 40k owners, a couple of hundred of which have coniption fits everytime an editorial --- or column --- or story --- runs that annoys them. Which is to say, every day.
Post a Comment