Potential East Valley Tribune sale is expanded
The East Valley Tribune is reporting that its long-discussed sale to Thirteenth Floor Street Media has been delayed because the company is negotiating to get the EVT’s sister papers in the Valley as well:
The new letter of intent also includes assets of the Sun City Daily News-Sun, Ahwatukee Foothills News and Arizona Interactive in Chandler, which publishes the Clipper advertising shopper and does commercial printing. The Daily-News Sun also publishes the Glendale/Peoria Today and Surprise Today newspapers.
The deal expanded because the operations are so closely intertwined, Freedom said in a statement.
Thirteenth Street owner Randy Miller was expected to be in the Valley this week visiting the staff at Freedom locations.
More details on the new developments at Heat City.
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The bright side of the decade from hell
Chris Coppola, the editor of the East Valley tribune, tries to limn it in a commentary today. He acknowledges the wars and economic troubles that have marked the past ten years, but makes this case:
[…] I’m not convinced the ’00s were all bad for us locally. The progress made in developing our freeway system and introducing light rail in the East Valley, along with ongoing improvements at Gateway and Falcon Field airports in Mesa, and Chandler’s municipal airport, will pay major dividends for this region down the road. History has proven that an efficient transportation system is a major key for any area’s economic health.
We’ve also seen an explosion of new hospitals and medical facilities and expansion of higher educational facilities — all the types of things that add to quality of life and prove attractive to new industries looking to set up shop with varied, and well-paying, jobs.
He goes through each town in his subscription area and notes the steps each has taken to position itself for the future.
My only complaint: In such a Republican area, in reviewing the crises of the decade he could have noted the failures of that party, both philosophically (in how, for example, its distaste for regulation helped create the housing and financial mess) and politically (an utterly failed president, a dismaying 2008 presidential candidate).
Don’t get me wrong: If anything, PHXated despises Democrats even more than Republicans. And I’m rooting for both Coppola and the paper. But it doesn’t help anyone not to utter some simple truths.
The future of the EVT, incidentally, remains in doubt, Heat City reports:
Earlier this month, a spokesman for the Mesa newspaper’s parent, Freedom Communications, said Dec. 24 would likely be the day the company would tell a federal bankruptcy court about the deal it hopes to strike with a Colorado businessman wanting to buy the Tribune.
But late Thursday, after nothing had been filed with the court, company spokeswoman Maya Pogoda said attorneys “have not finalized the agreement” with hopeful buyer Randy Miller.
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The buyer of the East Valley Tribune is asking staffers to re-apply for their jobs
Things don’t look good. Nick Martin writes in Heat City:
First, [Thirteenth Street Media owner Randy] Miller asked employees which position they are applying for – a problem because Miller has not said which positions might be available.
Later, Miller asks applicants to include three references, but he adds one instruction: “Please do not include relatives or former employers.”
No former employers, you say? So who does he want listed? Friends? Community leaders? A journalist’s sources? It’s unclear.
We should prepare for some grim holiday news from the East Valley Tribune. The smart business move is to radically downsize the serious staff and let the malleable souls remaining keep the thing filled with business-, advertiser- and government-friendly newsblurbs.
That, coincidentally, is what the company did when it took over a paper in Tucson called the Explorer. Here’s a former staffer quoted in the Tucson Weekly talking about where things were headed:
[The new editors] asked me and Oro Valley reporter Patrick McNamara if Marana and Oro Valley had [public information officers], and we said, “Yeah.” Do they send press releases? Do you put them in the paper? “No, not always. It depends on what it is. We never run a press release from a PIO.” They seemed a little taken aback by that. I quipped that most of the press releases for Marana were, “Come take a picture of this cactus we just planted.” Everyone else seemed to chuckle, but when they didn’t chuckle, I sort of knew I wasn’t going to be a part of these guys’ plan."
I can’t imagine the EVT was losing a lot of money. Its current owner, Freedom Communications, has claimed only that it had been “unprofitable” for the last two years. You can view that as a careful choice of words; on the other hand, the company is in bankruptcy, so maybe the word doesn’t have a special meaning. On the third hand, the company was loaded down with debt and might have been trying to unload a paper that wasn’t losing money just to raise cash.
The big question is how much debt Thirteenth Street is taking on to accomplish its own acquisition. The poster child for this scenario is Tribune Company, which took on oceans of new debt solely for the purpose of the privilege of being owned by Sam Zell. It, too, is in bankruptcy.
The EVT is a serious newspaper right now; if Thirteenth Street is rigorous in the cost-cutting, it can coast on that reputation (and the reflexive ad buys) for a while before folks really start noticing the decline in quality. In the meantime, again, its hard to see how a lot of local journalists won’t be facing a tough holiday.
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