Lee to acquire BH Media

Journal Star owner Lee Enterprises to acquire BH Media newspapers

 

"As part of the $140 million deal, Berkshire Hathaway -- the Omaha-based company run by Warren Buffett -- will provide $576 million in long-term financing to Lee at a 9% annual rate. That covers Lee's approximately $400 million of existing debt."

 

WSJ article:
Warren Buffett Is Giving Up on Newspapers

 

RIP OWH

 

Is BH Media design done at each site or are there hubs? If it's at each site, I imagine a lot of people are either going to be laid off or asked to relocate. Unless Lee does remote work; I'm not sure if they do.

 

Lee has 2 hubs - one in Madison, Wis., and the other in Munster, Ind. (just outside of Chicago). Can feel the workloads rising there already.

 

Shouldn't this be in the "Getting out of the business" thread?

 

Some of the smaller papers in the east are done in hubs that were there when BH acquired them. Omaha has a hub for the smaller papers in Nebraska and Iowa. Here in Tulsa, we do Waco's design and the Tulsa World's. For a lot of papers, though, the design is still handled in house.

 

Not gonna lie. As a guy who holds the title "Chief Designer," this is not an easy day mentally.

 

Lynchburg was a regional design hub for a lot of the smaller papers--Danville, Culpeper, Charlottesville, Martinsville, etc. Not sure if that's changed since I left.

 

Buffett is going to sell his papers for 140 million. He is going to lend 576 million at 9%. Lee will then pay off their 400 million in debt to other lenders with the proceeds of the loan.

My personal feeling about Lee is that they don't own enough big papers. I think that a lot of papers will go out of business. While small papers have been losing revenue at a slower pace than large papers it does not make sense to me that a town like Orangeburg will have a paper and a larger metro area like Charlotte will not.