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Thursday, August 14, 2003
Hearst seeks qualified buyer for P-I assets
The owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said it has put the assets of the 140-year-old newspaper up for sale, hiring a New York investment bank to seek a qualified buyer.
Yet the Hearst Corp. intends to ultimately prevail in the dispute that it says forced the move and continue publishing the newspaper, said Roger Oglesby, P-I editor and publisher, during a brief address this afternoon in the paper's newsroom.
The company, which has owned the P-I since 1921, went to court in April to try to block an effort by the Seattle Times Co. to end the joint operating agreement, or JOA, between the papers. A day later, the Times formally declared that it suffered three consecutive years of losses, starting an 18-month countdown toward the end of the agreement.
During that time, the JOA requires the companies to negotiate to end publication of one of the newspapers.
Although Hearst is trying through its lawsuit to stop that process, the countdown is continuing in the meantime. As a result, the New York-based company has been warning for more than three months that it would be forced to put the P-I up for sale, due to antitrust concerns that it believes would arise if the paper ultimately closes.
"The reason Hearst is doing this is because it is required under the terms of the JOA," Oglesby said during the staff meeting. "Hearst strongly believes that the Seattle Times has not suffered three years of losses under the meaning of the JOA, and we're pursuing that. And when the judge rules to that effect, Hearst intends to continue to publish the P-I under the JOA."
Hearst said in a news release that it is seeking a buyer that would operate the P-I as a "commercially independent daily newspaper" outside the joint operating agreement. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the investment bank hired by Hearst, also attempted to sell the company's San Francisco Examiner newspaper three years ago.
A spokeswoman for the Seattle Times was not immediately available for comment.
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