Venerable American newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Chicago Tribune, are up for sale after indications from publisher Tribune Company that it is willing to break itself up.
Tribune is one of America's biggest media empires - it owns 11 newspapers, 25 television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. But it has been racked by boardroom fallouts and has presided over plunging daily circulations.
In September, Tribune said it would consider takeover bids, sending its market value up to $8.1bn (£4.2bn) on Wall Street. But by a deadline of last Friday, the only bids were from a handful of private equity firms - including Bain Capital, Texas Pacific and Providence Equity - and the company's management feels that their level is inadequate.
Tribune's newspapers, which include the Orlando Sentinel, the Hartford Courant and the Baltimore Sun, yesterday reported that the company's investment bankers had written to interested parties saying offers for individual assets were now welcome. The company's shares fell by nearly 2% to $32.
In a news report, the LA Times quoted an unnamed businessman interested in buying part of Tribune as saying: "No one is going to be happy with this news. It's not good for Tribune. It's not good for the shareholders."
The lack of buyers has compounded disquiet about the future of institutions such as the 125-year-old LA Times, which has won 37 Pulitzer prizes and is America's fourth most widely read paper. In the six months to September, circulation fell 8% to 775,000. A break-up opens the door to individual buyers such as DreamWorks film studio co-founder David Geffen or billionaire property tycoon Eli Broad, who have both expressed interest in the paper.
