Harte gets new role in Minneapolis

Former Beacon Journal publisher Chris Harte, who becomes the new chairman of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, says he's driven by public service.

Harte, a resident of Texas and Maine, will be advising an investment group that has never owned a daily newspaper.

A day after McClatchy announced the sale of the Star Tribune to Avista, a New York private equity group, there are more questions than answers about how the deal will reshape the newspaper and its community, and whether it will serve as a template for an industry in transition.

Harte says he's still trying to figure it all out himself.

"This whole transaction came together so fast, really in just the last week or so," Harte said. "At this point we just don't know about things like my schedule."

Harte will be diving into a media market that, in less than a year, has become emblematic of the uncertainty facing the newspaper industry.

Minnesota's oldest newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, was sold this year after the McClatchy Co., the California-based owner of the Star Tribune, bought Knight Ridder. The Star Tribune, meanwhile, will be sold for $530 million less than half of what McClatchy paid for it in 1998.

[Like other papers sold by McClatchy, the Pioneer Press is also a Guild newspaper.]

Avista has promised to invest in the Star Tribune and to retain its publisher, Keith Moyer, and its top management. But industry observers worry that it might have to cut costs if advertising or circulation revenue don't improve.

"I would expect nothing to change right away, and we will have to look at all of this stuff and see what makes the most sense going forward. We want the product to stay at least as it is today and, if possible, improve. Our objective isn't to cut things out of the paper, it is to increase things in the paper."

Though this is Avista's first newspaper investment, Harte brings some media credentials. He's part owner of Current Publishing, which publishes eight weekly newspapers in Maine. He's a director and large shareholder of Harte-Hankes Inc., a San Antonio-based publisher and direct-marketing firm founded by his grandfather, Houston Harte.