Cut $30 million or declare bankruptcy?

Cut $30 million or declare bankruptcy? The Minneapolis Star Tribune should go for the latter, says magazine critic and former St. Paul Pioneer Press writer Brian Lambert.

Here's :Lambert's take on it:

The rumor mill within the Strib is, of course, on fire in the aftermath of publisher Chris Harte's latest memo--the one jangling the threat of imminent bankruptcy as a means to the end. The end, of course, being salvaging more than a nickel on the dollar of "the partners'" investment, not retaining a large, functioning news operation in Minnesota.

At this point, another round of concessions, cutting salaries, eliminating merit pay, larding even more health-care costs on employees, burning stockpiled issues of Marq for heat . . . whatever, strikes me as an exercise in masochistic futility. Bankruptcy is where Avista needs to take the Strib, and the sooner, the better, even though there probably isn't a banker anywhere who'll lend it cash to restructure.

This may be the time state leaders step forward and devise something like the pre-structured bankruptcy recommended for Detroit. The one obvious condition here being that Avista leaves town.

Bankruptcy is so inevitable, the Guild and the other unions might as well throw themselves on the mercy of a court rather than face off across a table with a group of professional vivisectionists with no detectable interest in the community service aspect of journalism.

Bankruptcy sounds scary. But in relative terms, is digging in and forcing Avista's hand really worse than formally consenting to another round of cuts with no reason--zero--to expect concessions will forestall the inevitable? There is simply no conceivable way that another $20 million out of employees' pockets does anything about addressing Avista's biggest problem--its monumental debt.