Chatham gets McClatchy with -- Ha! -- no-layoffs promise

New Jersey-based Chatham Asset Management hedge fund, McClatchy’s biggest debt holder and shareholder, purchased McClatchy’s 30 newspapers for $312 million. A federal bankruptcy court approved the sale.

Chatham promises no layoffs for a year. The same Chatham that laid off 1,600 employees after taking over Postmedia, Canada’s largest newspaper chain. The hedge fund run by Anthony Melchiorre also owns American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer.

McClatchy employees better be sending out their resumes now!

The Miami Herald, once the flag newspaper of Knight Newspapers, will be included in the eventual newsroom bloodbath.

Chatham beat out Alden Global Capital, another hedge fund that buys and guts newspapers through its MediaNews Group subsidiary.

McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder Inc. for $4.5 billion in 2006 at the worst possible time, just before the newspapers financial freefall, and slid into financial woes and bankruptcy rapidly after 163 years of owning newspapers. McClatchy went from an 1857 California Gold Rush start to down the toilet, dumping $1.4 billion in pensions onto the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Previously, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder. The Knight success story began with the Akron Beacon Journal and grew to more than 30 newspapers.

Hedge funds buy newspapers for the assets, decimate the staffs, suck out all the money they can and leave a shell of a newspaper.

Newsroom employees, like at the BJ and the Kansas City Star, have ownership bounced around like a pinball machine. This will the Star’s 5^th ownership. The BJ isn’t far behind.