MediaNews watchers, take note: more mergers are on the way for the conglomerate that owns the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the San Jose Mercury News and dozens of other papers.
MediaNews watchers, take note: more mergers are on the way for the conglomerate that owns the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the San Jose Mercury News and dozens of other papers.
On Friday, Jan. 15, the holding company for MediaNews filed for bankruptcy protection. Under the new arrangement, a group of lenders headed by Bank of America will forgive $765 million of debt in exchange for 80 percent ownership of the holding company, Affiliated Media, Inc.—although MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton and company prez Joseph Lodovic will retain control of the seven-member board.
The move leaves MediaNews technically intact but, no shocker here, looking for ways to shave costs. The Wall Street Journal reports that on the day of the announcement, Singleton said he wanted to be “aggressive” about merging newspapers. “Asked which newspapers or groups of newspapers might be combined,” the WSJ wrote, “Mr. Singleton answered, ‘You can look at the map.’”
We don’t know exactly what Lean Dean meant by that, but we do know that the Merc’s offices are about 45 minutes thataway, and we have to wonder if the months-old rumors that the Sentinel’s operations are headed the way of its junked printing press have some substance after all.
