El Paso Inc: El Paso Times for sale and lots more
Newspaper giant Digital First Media, which operates the El Paso Times and 75 other daily papers across the country, says it may sell its newspaper holdings.
The company, the nation’s No. 2 newspaper chain, has said it would consider selling the company as a whole or by region.
The company refused to comment on rumors circulating last week that it was entertaining bids on the properties, whole or in part.
In a statement, John Paton, Digital First’s CEO, said, “The news information industry in America is undergoing a period of seismic change, defined by the need to consolidate to rapidly compete in a digital world. The companies that will succeed are those which have meaningful scale and digital expertise.”
“As a result,” he continued, “we believe we have many options available to us to maximize the value of our businesses for our stockholders, and the Board of Directors has therefore decided to assess the full range of those opportunities.”
Contacted by El Paso Inc. on Friday, El Paso Times editor Bob Moore referred comment to Digital First Media.
A Digital First spokesperson reached by telephone Friday said, “No comment.” However, in an announcement earlier, the company had said it would withhold comment until a deal is done or it concludes a review of options.
Digital First is headquartered in New York and is controlled by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. In September, it announced that it has not set a deadline and cautioned that the process may not end with a sale.
UBS Securities is serving as Digital First’s financial advisor and Hughes Hubbard & Reed as its legal advisor, according to a press release.
“The pick of UBS shows the big sale dream here: Sell to, or merge, with another big newspaper owner, creating a newspaper company with more than 100 dailies, creating the largest chain of dailies in U.S. history,” media analyst Ken Doctor wrote on the Nieman Journalism Lab blog in September.
Doctor, who has been following the story, argued the greatest likelihood is that Digital First’s properties will be sold off regionally, in clusters.
“Who’d want to buy dozens of newspapers?” he wrote in September. “The industry’s print advertising revenue is in barely controlled freefall, down 8 percent a year since 2011; this budget season’s now-familiar gut-wrenching forecast for 2015 is the same.”
Two years ago, the El Paso Times sold its Campbell Street headquarters to the city of El Paso after City Hall was demolished to make way for the Triple-A ballpark.
And this year, in September, The Denver Post reported that Digital First had sold 67 properties nationwide since 2012 and was actively marketing another 70 newspaper buildings with an estimated value of $85 million.
Before that there were layoffs. In October 2013, the El Paso Times reported that the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership, which publishes the El Paso Times and seven New Mexico newspapers, would lay off 19 employees.
El Paso Times president Sergio Salinas said at the time that it was “a painful decision that is necessary as our business environment changes,” citing a soft economy and increased competition for digital advertising.
Digital First Media was formed in December 2013 through the merger of Dean Singleton’s Media News Group and the old Journal Register Company. It is the second largest newspaper company in the United States by circulation, according to the company. It has a portfolio of 800 news and information products, including 76 daily/Sunday newspapers and 160 weekly publications.
The El Paso Times was founded in 1881. It was locally owned until 1972, when Dorrance Roderick sold it to the Gannett Co. Inc.
In 2003, Gannett and MediaNews Group formed a partnership between the Times and MediaNews’ New Mexico papers, with Gannett as the managing partner. In 2005, Gannett became a minority partner in the El Paso Times, handing the majority of the partnership and management to Denver-based MediaNews.
