Media General newspaper properties sold

To Berkshire Hathaway:

The release:

 

A 10.5 percent loan? I guess they're selling Tampa to the title pawn place.

 

Sorry, forgot to mention that Tampa was not part of the sale. I wonder if Halifax will try to go after the Tribune.

As an MG newspaper employee, I'm cautiously optimistic about this turn of events.

 

Seems to me like non-Tampa people might be OK, and Tampa people are fucked.

 

Considering some of the copy desk/design for a lot of the papers originates in Tampa, this is an interesting development.

 

Yeah, the Tampa people better be prepared to tell their new bosses to take their non-competes and shove it up their asses.

 

I'd say it's over for the Tampa Tribune. I don't see that paper publishing in 2013.

 

Or its satellites surrounding Tampa, like Hernando and Highlands. They're toast.

 

I wonder what this means for the consolidated design center for MG's big papers ... Tampa was producing sections for both Richmond and Winston-Salem (Richmond was doing the rest) ... I can't see the new owners keeping a CDC in Richmond just to do two papers ...

 

Halifax is still keenly interested in having Tampa as part of its Florida empire, which includes Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Ocala, Lakeland and Sarasota.

But here's the optimistic conspiracy theory: MG keeps Tampa until August, when it gets a nice chunk of revenue from the GOP convention, and THEN sells to Berkshire.

Now for the flip side: Warren Buffett likes local papers, especially in communities where they're the main source for news, which means the Tribune's competition with the Tampa Bay (nee St. Petersburg) Times might mean it's a nonplayer for Berkshire.

 

I would love to be optimistic about this, but Warren's up there. How much longer will he run the company? He's still calling the shots, even though they nominally announced a succession plan a few years back.

 

Any day you go from being run by Marshall Morton to being run by Warren Buffett is a good fucking day.