Difficult decision tonight. Watch the premiere of the new series, formerly titled, “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger”, (now known as “The Knights of Prosperity”), or catch a screening of the Judi Dench-as-crazed-repressed-lesbian flick, “Notes on a Scandal”? I hear Jagger is actually pretty funny in the former, but, damn, I’m a sucker for psycho grand dames.
Until I decide on that weighty matter, I continue to monitor the trepidations of the Star Tribune staff in the wake of the paper’s sale to Avista Capital Partners. As I’ve said previously, there isn’t much in the way of precedent to reassure either the community or the staff that the Star Tribune will be a better newspaper under private equity management. Maybe that’ll be the case, but, believe me antennae in the Strib newsroom are up and on hi-gain for the earliest indicator of Avista’s true intentions, the canary is in the mineshaft and sniffing for gas.
Avista won’t close on the Star Tribune purchase until late February, but the new operators will play a role in deciding on a replacement for editor/Sr. VP, Anders Gyllenhaal, who is leaving for the Miami Herald. The choice of a known commodity, like the Strib’s current managing editor, Scott Gillespie, will, I’m told, be viewed positively by the newsroom. Along with being familiar with the area and to the staff, Gillespie is generally regarded as, both “a human being” and more newspaper man than corporate accountant. Anyone can change, of course, when their career suddenly depends on squeezing 8% more profit per quarter out of the company turnip, but the consensus of the moment seems to be that Stribbers much prefer their chances with Gillespie than yet another grey slacks and blue blazer transient from the Avista management training farm.
The appearance of the latter type will evoke two responses: A glut of resumes on city streets from every non-revenue-producing Star Tribune employee, and a “battle stations” call to the various unions.
Veteran business writer, Mike Meyers, a “silverback” in the Strib newsroom, believes if Avista, “is going to squeeze, they’ll squeeze early.” He isn’t sure if any of his colleagues should be comforted by publisher Keith Moyer staying on, since logic suggests there’s a significant advantage … to Avista … in having a guy in place who knows where cuts can be made.
No hippie, Meyers insists he’d like to see Avista, or any owner make gobs of money via the Star Tribune’s papa gorilla status in the Twin Cities advertising market. He reminds me that the paper’s share of all local advertising revenue actually increased over the past year to a whopping 40%-plus — in a year allegedly so grim for mainstream newspapers.
“But there are an awful lot of ‘strip and flip’ artists out there,” says Meyers, returning to most Stribbers’ default position of guilty until proven innocent.
Personally, Meyers is fascinated with the real estate Avista is picking up, at a time when a very well-heeled developer, Vikings owner, Zygi Wilf, is making loud sniffing noises of his own, downtown and around the Metrodome, where the Star Tribune owns five city blocks.
“The $25 million figure for all that property is a joke,” says Meyers . “The true value is much closer to $100 million. I mean, the land under the new Target store [on Nicollet Mall] sold for $27 million in 1998.”
If true, Avista is almost guaranteed a fat profit on its’ fire sale investment of $530 million, even if it flips the keys to someone new in a couple years. More to the point, Avista could … COULD, I say … achieve its profit goals without laying off staff and reducing coverage, as so many other publicly-owned papers are doing.
There is no consensus on whether a decision to scale back or dump completely the myriad ancillary publications the Strib is churning out, including the recently launched entertainment freebie, VitaMN, is a canary killer. If resources currently being consumed by all these peripheral publications were reoriented back into the primary product — the daily newspaper — instead of a death swoon the little birdy might even chirp brightly.
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