Of buying and selling the Star Tribune

Bruce Kesler dubs Star Tribune “reader’s representative” Kate Parry the “$670 million ombudsman.” Bruce looks at our reporting on Keith Ellison and the flying imams — stories in the Star Tribune’s back yard — and finds Parry’s service wanting. I don’t think that Kate has been a forceful reader’s representative, but responsibility for the decline in the Star Tribune’s value should obviously be spread very widely.
One factor that has not been brought up in any of the analyses of the causes for the Star Tribune’s fire sale price is the possibility that McClatchy overpaid for the paper when it bought it for roughly $1.2 billion eight years ago. I think the fault for the bath McClatchy has taken lies with McClatchy management in more than one sense, yet it is not in the interest of either McClatchy or Avista Partners to point it out.
Consider also Kevin Seifert’s January 2 story noting that McClatchy’s sale of the paper included five blocks of prime downtown Minneapolis real estate. Greg Lang mulls that fact over here.