The Lonely Newspaper Reader

Charlie Buffum, BJ retiree in New York City who still reads newspapers, calls our attention to a column in the Times by David Carr who muses about the sale of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and about how his children now rush off to the digital world while he sits alone with four papers at the kitchen table.

You will want to click on the headline to read the full story, but if you are like Carr’s family and only need a quick fix, here are the salient graphs:

The paper, around in one version or another since 1867, may not have knocked down a lot of Pulitzers, but with its vigorous political reporting and thoughtful cultural coverage, it has served as a center for civic life in Minneapolis and beyond. The Star Tribune was not a great paper, but then my first car, a very used ’64 Ford Falcon, wasn’t great either. I still have a great deal of affection for both.

There are two ways to look at the sale: the second-biggest newspaper operator in the country, with its stock dropping in the wake of the Knight Ridder deal, dumped a paper with near 20 percent profit margins in what looked like a fire sale because big papers are doomed. Or, more brightly, a private equity firm saw an opportunity for a savvy investor who could operate the property without the quarter-to-quarter franticness that comes with making Wall Street happy.

It is a cliché of the media business that the assets go up and down the elevator every day. In Minneapolis, many of those assets are pals from my days of working as a reporter and editor at a weekly there, so I wondered: Who would be controlling their professional destinies, bottom feeders or benefactors?

Private equity owners are often viewed with suspicion, in part because they have limited investment horizons and tend to milk properties for cash flow, clean up the balance sheet and then flip the property to what is technically known as a “greater fool.” The sale of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News by McClatchy to a local group of investors has resulted, after a sharp downturn this summer, in a great deal of strife and talks of significant layoffs.

I talked to OhSang Kwon, one of the partners in Avista Capital Partners. “We don’t want to rule out anything, but the idea that we bought this paper with a quick exit in mind or that we were going to cut our way to profitability is not correct,” he said. “I don’t have the hubris to say that we have the answers — we are new to the newspaper business — but the old way was not working. Maybe it is time for a different approach.”

As I sat at the kitchen table, I marveled at the low price of a newspaper that had once preoccupied the conversation around my dinner table. Then I looked at the four papers on the table and the empty chairs that surrounded them. Before my second cup of coffee, the rest of my household had already started the day in a way that had nothing to do with the paper artifacts in front of me. Maybe I was the greater fool.