McClatchy Company Dumps Catholic-Bashing StarTribune at a Half-Billlion-Dollar Loss to Corporate Speculators

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The Catholic-Bashing Star Tribune, thirty years without a Pulitzer prize, doesn't seem to have much appeal to its recent owner, the California based giant conglomerate, the McClatchy Company. McClatchy has decided after the the "Red Star" showed its true colors on its editorial page with a vicious attack on the Catholic Church, to dump the paper at a $500,000,000 loss. That's one-half billion dollars, people! Loss!

A private equity firm has reached an agreement to buy the Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co., publisher Keith Moyer announced today.

According to a press release from the Star Tribune, Avista Capital Partners, an investment group focused on media, healthcare and energy companies, will pay for $530 million for the newspaper, which Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy bought from Cowles Media Co. in 1998 for $1.2 billion.

The deal is expected to formally close sometime in the spring. Chris Harte, a member of Avista’s advisory board, will serve as chairman of a board overseeing the Star Tribune. Harte is a former publisher of newspapers in Akron, Ohio; Portland, Maine and State College, Pa.

The printed daily newspaper “will be the core of our business well into the future,” Harte said. “But it won’t be the overwhelming majority that it is today many years from now.

“You and I and everyone who works with us will have to listen carefully to our readers and our advertisers and make sure we provide them with the information and advertising they want, when they want it, how they want it,” he said. “By doing that, the Star Tribune will continue to be the dominant medium in the Twin Cities.”
[...Snip] Star Tribune

Maybe!