Under the plan, Freedom’s secured debt would be reduced from $770 million to $325 million. Unsecured creditors would split an initial $32.2 million but would be able to pursue a lawsuit against the company board and insurance companies in an effort to recoup up to $25 million more.MediaNews Group, meanwhile, will file its bankruptcy plan sometime in early March and already an affiliate of the Tribune Co. has filed a preemptive challenge. From the Denver Business Journal:The Hoiles family, which has owned the flagship Register newspaper since 1935, would have no ownership. The lenders have already named a new board of directors that will take over when the company emerges from bankruptcy. According to the court filings, Osborne will be the post-bankruptcy CEO. He has been interim chief executive since last summer.
According to the objection, GreenCo paid $2.4 million in 1998 for an irrevocable option to buy all of the assets and business operations of the Los Angeles Daily News, which is owned by MediaNews Group. The option, which was due to expire in 2010, has never been exercised, and GreenCo says it’s owed at least $8.4 million under the terms of the contract.
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33 comments:
what exactly does this mean? does anyone know? not following. thanks
confusing. does anyone know? also, there was a big meeting at the DN today with the man who second under dean singleton.
Singleton has a lot of big meetings where nothing is accomplished. That is one of his main problems.
What does this mean. Nothing you need to worry about. They are in debt big time and the economy as well as the death of newspapers are not his friends.
The courts will work it out and along the way more employees will get screwed as Singleton and his pals pad their pockets.
Dean, hire someone who knows how to spell advertising, please.
sounds like tribune wants its money OR wants to absorb the Daily News. They would prolly shut it down.
Dean Singleton's business philosophy: "If I had my choice between pleasing one banker or 1000 journalists, I'd rather please the banker."
Why is it that large mostly Republican ( keep the government out of my life ) based companies suddenly want to get a Bailout!
Just like a republican would want let the market run it's course and let them fail.
If you can please a banker then get out of the business.
I'm not sure how the dynamics work in the GreenCo situation but if this is true, Singleton has a big problem. That will cause the bk to hang up until GreenCo is satisfied, which will mean big dollars. That is a significant challenge, but considering the size of the overall debt forgiveness, one that they should be able to deal with. Closing it down would not be logical in the short term.
Going through bk has nothing to do with government bailouts. Conservatives do not have a problem with the government enforcing contractual relationships, and bk is part of that process.
Thanks, 3:57/11:28, for the informed analysis. Without focus on facts and industry insight, we'd have only fatuous dean-bashing and blowhard cliches to sort out whatever GreenCo is and means.
Dean deserves bashing.
what informed analysis?
i don't see an informed analysis. no one has addressed the fact that MNG is in bankruptcy and there will be some serious changes as a result. when the one poster says nothing to worry about, that is false. there is alot. and with trib wanting that money, it's going to mean either pay up or hand over the DN. serious repercussions. again, this company is in big debt.
think about it folks....without emotions but with logic.
does that mean the current dn publisher will go back to work for the times for the third time?
I guarantee you that none of these papers will be closing down. Consolidated maybe, but not closed down. The debtors benefit nothing by that. The purpose of bk is to give businesses a chance to recover, not collapse. Newspaper in So Cal will consolidate, no doubt. They have to.
Exactly how much more can they consolidate? The lang group is one newspaper for most of the area it attempts to cover. The Times is a city newspaper without much local left, and the Register is a shell of yesteryear.
What you will see is continued down circulation which means delivery costs go up, continued losses in classified, not that there is much more to lose, and smaller readership, even though newspapers will tell you readership is on the rise. Couple that with no clue or ability to compete online and consolidation would be the good news answer.
I hate to say this but there is a lot that could be consolidated. I'm not saying I like it, but there is a lot of room when you look at the whole region. You can count on it. The next six months to a year will make your head spin.
If you mean consolidate will cost a number of additional jobs, I agree. If you mean news, especially local will disappear, it has. Will newspapers get together to get more blood out of employees, you bet. They will further alienate what readers and advertisers they have left in a quicker death spiral.
Share a newspaper with friends. Pass-along is green and and conserves resources. Build stronger communities by passing along few newspapers between Northridge, Covina and Brea.
Dean used to make money those handful of years ago when he said he'd rather please the bankers than the journalists.
Another problem is the breakdown of accountability on the part of upper management at Dean's properties. Not all, but a majority have been kowtowing to local police and government entities in addition to major advertisers.
If these papers had been putting out a journalistically respectable product these last several years, the subscriber base wouldn't be as anemic as it is now.
right 12:01. let me get in my car and drop off my newspaper to a friend in another community who, if he/she wanted to read it would have subscribed to their newspaper in the first place.
as far a kowtowing to political and police honchos, I will leave that speculation to others. as far as a subscriber base going south, try to fix a circ problem and you will quickly see one of the big reasons why people have had enough.
Two more objections were filed Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in connection with the pre-packaged reorganization plan offered by Affiliated Media Inc., parent of Denver-based newspaper chain MediaNews Group Inc.
The latest objections were filed in Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where a hearing is to be held Thursday on Affiliated’s reorganization plan. The filings were by Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. and Warner Gateway Partners, landlord of the MediaNews-published Daily News of Los Angeles.
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2010/03/01/daily10.html
The kowtowing is more than mere speculation. Witnessed it m'self many a time.
All right 12:22 and 10:00. Back up your claims of kowtowing to police and government. Oh wait, since you are bravely anonymous windbags, don't bother, since it would just be more slander.
I am neither of the posters you called out. If they have specifics, they should share. Whether or not they kotow to honchos still doesn't make it right that the product simply sucks.
Hey 11:49, appears you use the same anonymous moniker as the two posters you single out. You don't happen to be an "executive" there, do you?
Yep, I pretty much run the whole show, skeetballs to bowling pins. Pretty cush, too. Lotsa parking, fewer meetings these days, pretty quiet most of the time. Oops, gotta split, there's a punjab I gotta kowtow to, someone important from the city ... wait, no, it's just a couple of Devonshire cops pulled up in the empty parking lot eating donuts.
5:30, it is good you are an executive at the legion of doom rather than a journalist. You might want to try your hand at comedy.
Kowtowing: (SGVN) The Pasadena Star-News not reporting what was REALLY going on in Pasadena's school districts in the 1990s.
Kowtowing: (Numerous properties) Killing stories with even a slightly negative reference to an advertiser.
Kowtowing: (Daily Bulletin) Editing the cops logs to remove certain crimes that might make a particular neighborhood look less attractive.
That's it, woodstein? The big Lang kowtow expose?
I am all for a great expose, but, you could come up with that crap, depending on your point of view at virtually any newspaper in the country. Still vague and misleading. Here I am defending Medianews...what a crappy position to be in.
You missed the whole point: The kowtowing was obvious to the readers and contributed to so many subscribers going elsewhere. Readers aren't stupid; they are more in touch than you give them credit for and can tell when the real stories aren't being told. Those examples were purposely vague. Honest reporters and copy editors were just doing as they were told. Giving more specific examples would indirectly implicate those who don't deserve to be punished for following orders in a culture of fear perpetuated by their supervisors.
Petty, bitter nonsense.
Bitter? Yes, still bitter years later. You are goddamn right about that. Bitter after seeing so many people screwed over and over again by lousy leadership. BTW: I wasn't laid off or fired; I left years ago on my own accord.
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