Death of a Fly

Looks like the NY Times Company will have to hold on to the Boston Globe whether it wants to or not: NY Times Scraps Plans to Sell Boston Globe

The New York Times Co said it has given up its plan to sell The Boston Globe and related businesses after drastic cuts it imposed on the daily newspaper earlier this year improved its financial position.

The announcement caps a painful odyssey for the 137-year-old Boston Globe that began earlier this year when the Times threatened to close the paper if it could not get its unions to agree to deep cost cuts.

Selling the Globe would have been a dismal exit from Boston for the Times. The company spent $1.1 billion to buy the Globe in 1993, at the time the most money ever paid for a single U.S. newspaper. The offers it reportedly received for the Globe this month were less than 10 percent of what it paid.

(snip)

The company did not say whether stopping the sale process was related to two offers it reportedly received last Friday, the day it had set for bids on the paper.

California investment firm Platinum Equity submitted a bid, according to the Globe, as did a group led by Stephen Taylor, whose family sold the Globe to the Times Co.

The groups made preliminary bids of about $35 million, plus the assumption of $59 million of pension liabilities, the Globe said.

$35 million? That's, uh, not a lot of money, especially for such an ostensibly "prestigious" "important" newspaper whose very existence was necessary to maintain Boston's status as a "two-newspaper" town. What, the Boston Herald's not good enough?

Maybe, Rush Limbaugh can put some of that St. Louis Rams money to good use...