Would you buy a car from this man?

City Pages - the News and Arts Weekly in Minneapolis & St. Paul - has posted an extensive, must-read article with references to both Par Ridder and former BJ publisher Chris Harte who defends him.

The illustration of Par by Jay Bevenour nearly steals the show from the great story by G.R. Anderson Jr. and Paul Demoko.

See for yourself by clicking on the headline which will take you to citypages.com

Here are the sub headlines for the July 25 story:

Trials and Stribulations
Staffs gutted.
Secrets stolen.
A traitorous publisher forced to defend his actions in court.
The future has never looked bleaker for the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.

The caption for the illustration asks the question:

Would you buy a car from this man?

Here are some relevant graphs pulled from the story:

“Taking the stand in Judge David Higgs's courtroom, Par Ridder couldn't have looked more like a rich boarding-school kid. The 38-year-old publishing scion was decked out in country-club navy blue with a haircut that was square in every sense of the word.

“His counterpart, MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton, a self-made media mogul from Graham, Texas, cracked wise with reporters in the gallery outside the courtroom. Shuffling on legs hobbled by multiple sclerosis, the 55-year-old was in town just to enjoy the show—and to watch Ridder squirm.

“The ignoble occasion was a three-day hearing in late June that pitted the Pioneer Press against the Star Tribune, Minnesota's two largest daily newspapers. Ridder had raised eyebrows in March when he announced he was stepping down as publisher of the Pioneer Press to take the top job at the Star Tribune. Ridder's family had run the St. Paul daily for nearly 80 years. In that time, the two broadsheets went to war over scoops, revenues, and readers. To switch sides was the publishing equivalent of treason.

"But the real bombshell came in April, when MediaNews, parent company of the Pioneer Press, sued Ridder and the Star Tribune in Ramsey County District Court. In unseemly detail, the civil complaint laid out accusations that Ridder stole a laptop computer, sensitive financial data, and top employees when he jumped ship to the Strib.

"This theft of confidential information—and its receipt by the Star Tribune—was a clear violation of the law," one court document reads, asserting that Ridder and others used "wiping programs" to "cover their tracks."

“The last year has been a period of unprecedented turbulence for the state's two biggest daily newspapers, each of which has changed ownership.

“The Pioneer Press was first on the auction block. Under pressure from Wall Street, the Knight Ridder newspaper chain sold its 32 daily papers to the McClatchy Company in June 2006. But because McClatchy already owned the Star Tribune, it quickly announced plans to re-sell the Pioneer Press in order to avoid running afoul of antitrust regulations. Denver-based MediaNews then purchased the St. Paul paper and three California newspapers for $1 billion.

“Just six months later, McClatchy announced it was selling the Star Tribune, the flagship paper in its chain of 33 dailies. If the sale was a surprise, the price was downright astonishing. Avista Capital Partners, a private equity firm with no prior experience in the newspaper business, agreed to buy the Strib for $530 million—less than half what McClatchy had paid for the paper eight years earlier.”

Chris Harte, a consultant for Avista who serves as chairman of the Star Tribune, defends Ridder, insisting that he's been treated unfairly by the media. "I'm frankly astounded at how many journalists are jumping to conclusions on the basis of allegations of a competitor who is obviously out to gain competitive advantage," he writes.

Avista claims that it's in the newspaper business for the long haul—Harte writes that he expects Avista to own the paper for "quite a while." But fears persist that the company bought the paper to cut costs and sell out within five years for a quick profit, something for which private equity firms are notorious.