Comments on: Who Will Buy The Statesman?

By: Statesman Sits On Valuable Property | The Jeff Beckham Weblog

Statesman Sits On Valuable Property | The Jeff Beckham Weblog — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:56:44 +0000

[...] been odd enough to think about the Statesman under new ownership, but even odder to think about them not being in their familiar [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:56:14 +0000

Matt: Concrete examples? Better newspapers in markets our size? Corrupt politicians we’ve coddled?

Jeff: Points well taken. And mostly in action.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:47:09 +0000

My money is on Belo. Just a hunch.

When I moved here 15 years ago I was very surprised the Statesman wasn’t a much better paper. With cheap labor from UT and A&M there should be plenty of talent to hire. With our bloated, corrupt state government as well as the bloated city government, there should never be a shortage of interesting news to cover. But it’s obvious their management has been bored and coasting for years. Their priority is to rub elbows with politicians to gain favor, and to kiss the ass of businesses so they’ll advertise in the newspaper.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:59:48 +0000

Gannett would definitely be another option. The only mention I saw of them in my initial research was in an AP story: Atorino said Gannett Co., the largest owner of U.S. newspapers, had cash to make acquisitions, but questioned whether it would be interested in expanding its reach when the industry is in decline. Also, as I was writing this post, Gannett had some bad news of their own come out: Cutting 1,000 newspaper jobs across the board.

By: McChris

McChris — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:27:52 +0000

After McClatchy, Gannett was the first potential buyer that came to mind, and it seems like The Statesman would complement their other mid-market properties. Do you know if the company is in bad shape that it's not coming up as a prospective buyer? A Gannett purchase would be a bad thing, but if there's any upside, it's not like The Statesman is a Courier-Journal for it to gut.