NYT: The Miami Herald may also be for sale

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/media/06paper.html

As Daniel Kaffee says in A Few Good Men right after Jo tell him she's going to Cuba with him...

"And the hits just keep oooon coming..."

 

Papers "for sale" ... that's funny. Who the hell is buying?

 

Can we combine all these threads about papers searching for buyers with the thread about the Fitch Ratings?

 

This is a property worth buying, IF some investors could be found who aren't planning to put up a dime for each $100 they borrow of the price. But South Florida should be a good market for the information business. The Herald has a brand name.

 

You would think the Herald would have plenty of value. But most people who have bought newspapers lately (Philly, Minneapolis, Newsday, Tribune Co.) ain't too happy about it.

 

I feel like the only people who will buy papers right now (or in the next five years) are kajillionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon.

 

I don't know. If I had the money, my heart would want to do it. But that market scares me. Not South Florida as a whole but Dade County. There are some obstacles there that you just can't outwork or out-think. I don't know if an English-language daily can do anything but shrink there. And this new content-sharing agreement with the PBP and S-S makes it unlikely they could gain the circ outside the county.

 

A former co-worker of mine, now in South Florida, tells me that the whole story-sharing agreement is overblown. Not many stories are being shared. Mainly the papers are using stories from the competiton to fill holes on inside pages.

 

Frank, one thing to consider in making the Herald an investment is that the S-S and PBP are in pretty dire circumstances as well. Isn't the S-S a Trib property? Zell's going bankrupt by 2010 at the latest.

 

I disagree. I think Lee Abrams plan to have crime reporters dress like Columbo is a major source of untapped revenue.

 

The Tribune isn't in a position to buy the Miami Herald, but the Sun Sentinel is not in dire financial situation. It's yearly operating cash flow (revenue minus expenses) is in the tens of millions of dollars. The Miami Herald land on the ocean could make the paper an attractive purchase.

 

I'm really hoping one of these papers gets donated to a non-profit foundation to just give the thing a try. Imagine any paper allowed to spend 10 or 20 percent more per quarter than it can currently instead of packing it up and sending it out of town.