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Weekly UpdatesDespite the economic downturn and unprecedented advertising recession, newspaper mergers and acquisitions continued apace in recent days, with the deal to sell Blethen Maine Newspapers inching forward and the contenders for Washington, D.C.'s Congressional Quarterly Inc. -- owned by Florida's St. Petersburg Times -- narrowing.
Maine's Portland Press Herald reported today that 22 non-union workers at Blethen Maine -- which includes not only the Press Herald, but also the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and the MaineToday.com web sites -- have been told their services will no longer be needed when a consortium headed by Richard Connor takes over, as early as next week.
Connor, the editor and publisher of the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and the former head of Lionheart Newspapers Inc. of Dallas, is working with the private equity firm HM Capital Partners LLC. The two together bought the Times Leader from The McClatchy Co. in 2006.
Even though he's laying off 22 non-union workers -- who include Blethen Maine's publisher and chief executive Robert Bickler, as well as the editor in Portland, the publisher of the two smaller dailies and the editor of the Augusta and Waterville papers -- Connor said in a statement today that he had mailed letters to a majority of the non-union employees offering them jobs, at a 10-percent salary cut.
Unions in Maine took massive cuts in agreements approved late last month in return for gaining a 15-percent ownership stake in papers and two seats on the board of directors.
In his statement today, Connor said to expect more staff cuts at the Maine operations to bring costs in line with the realities of decreased revenue. The Press Herald quoted Connor as saying he wants to create a more responsive, community-oriented media company.
The web site Politico.com reported today that the field of four suitors for Congressional Quarterly Inc. has dwindled to just one. The site said that three potential buyers, Bloomberg L.P., Atlantic Media (owner of National Journal and CongressDaily) and Allbritton Communications (which owns Politico.com), had all dropped out of the running.
The site said that only the Economist Group -- owner of CQ competitor Roll Call -- was remaining, though there was apparently an outside chance a private equity firm might be in the hunt.
Congressional Quarterly Inc. includes daily, weekly and monthly publications as well as electronic niche-based newsletters. It a wholly owned subsidiary of the Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg, which in turn is owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit school for journalists also based in St. Petersburg. Poynter and the Times put the CQ operation up for sale in January.
In other newspaper mergers and acquisitions news, Journal Register Co. of Yardley, Pa., said last week that it had earlier sold its Lapeer Group in Michigan to JAMS Media of Lapeer, Mich. No terms for the asset-only deal were disclosed; newspaper broker Dirks, Van Essen & Murray of Santa Fe, N.M., represented Journal Register in the deal.
Journal Register declared bankruptcy in February and is in the process of liquidating many of its publications. The Lapeer Group in Michigan includes the 170-year-old weekly County Press as well as a dozen other publications. The deal was approved by the bankruptcy judge on May 29.
Lastly in M&A news, The Hearst Corp. on Wednesday said it had been successful in its tender offer for all the shares of Hearst-Argyle Television Inc. that it did not already own. The privately held Hearst had offered $4 a share for the company in April, but sweetened the deal to $4.50 last month.
At that price, the company paid about $77-1/2 million to take the TV company, which was founded in 1997 with the merger of Hearst's television stations and publicly owned Argyle Televisions Holdings II, private. The company owns 26 TV stations, and manages an additional three TV and two radio stations and is now known as Hearst Television Inc.
Ironically, Hearst had tried to take the TV company private in 2007, wrangling with independent directors over a price. Eventually, shareholders rejected a deal that was valued at $23.50 per share. By my count, that intransigence left $32.7 million in Hearst's pocket.
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