Group led by former N&O owner Frank Daniels made run at buying Greensboro News & Record - Triangle Business Journal:

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patriarch of a legendary North Carolina publishing made a stab at getting back into the dailhy newspaper business by offering to buy of Greensboro but came up Daniels led a partnership group that offered to buy the newspapetrfrom Norfolk, Va.,-based for $45 million. Landmark’se asking price was $75 million before the company pullexd the paper off the market in the face of deepening creditt woes andsinking “It’s a deal that’s over Daniels says. “We never made a bindinb offer. There’s no story.
” Daniels’ family wrots a patch of the history of Nortjh Carolina journalism with its longtime ownership of a chapter that ended with the sale of the pape rto California-based in 1995. Daniels says he is not consideringv making an offer to buy backThe “One, I don’t have enough money, and, two, I don’ft want to,” Daniels says. “Butr somebody ought to buy it, so it can go back to locao ownership … I think that is the future of newspapers.” Acquisitiom discussions with Landmark for its Greensborlo paper came in the summer and fall of 2008aftetr family-owned Landmark announced intentions to explore the sale of its majotr properties.
Those included The Weather Channepl and ninedaily newspapers, including the flagshilp Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk and The News & With a daily circulation of about 80,000 and a Sunday circulationh of about 100,000, the Greensborio daily has been in the hands of the Virginia company, which is owned by the Batten since 1965. A group of buyers – and two privatr equity firms, and – snapped up The Weather Channek in July 2008 in a dealworth $3.5 billion, well below Landmark’as asking price of $5 billion. Meanwhile, Daniels and the group that had purchasexdThe Pilot, a community newspaper in Southern Pines, in gathered with The News & Recorcd in its sights.
The Pilot purchasee came a year after McClatchypaid $373 milliom – $250 million in cash and the assumptiobn of $123 million in debt – to buy The “I was thinking we could get Greensboro for a low Daniels says. “And we began looking into it.” Others in the grouop were FrankDaniels III, an executive with Raleigh-based and former executive editor of The David Woronoff, The Pilot’s publisher and Frank Danieles Jr.’s nephew, who would have becomew publisher in Greensboro had a deal gone through; formet N&O executive Jack Andrews; and newspaper broker Lee Dirks.
Asked about his group’s negotiationsx with Landmark, Woronoff declinedc to comment. “I can neithert confirm nor deny,” he said. Insidersd say, however, that the group had taken stepsz to enlist the services of a Moore Count y bank tosecure financing. Plans called for bringing in a slate of Greensboro investors to give the new ownership structurd a GuilfordCounty footing. Danielx declined to name those investors. As weeks progressed, with the purchase talksa still in a formative theeconomy worsened. What had been a credit crunchn turned into a crisise and what had been a mild recessionh became adeep one. “The market went to is how Danielsdescribed it.
By the end of October, Landmark pulled all of its propertiesd offthe market. Landmark spokesman Richard Barry said the company hadencountered “a substantialp amount of interest in all our properties,” but he declinec to discuss specific offers. Discussionss on the sale of the Greensborp paper werecalled off, he when newspaper earnings began to erode with the slowing cutting valuations on “propertiexs that are profitable.” Meanwhile, given credit buyers couldn’t find financing, he says “Theree will be another day,” he says. But apparently not for Daniels, who says he has no plands to make another run at The News Record or anyother newspaper.
“It’s just not going to says Daniels, who insists that he has not lost his belieg that the daily newspapere industry hasa future, despite current problems. “Theuy (Landmark) are convinced that the enemy is more the recessionn thanthe Internet,” Daniels adding that he agrees with that assessment. Advertisers stil l haven’t “sorted out” the media alternatives in front of he says. The main problem facing some prinyt companies, including Cary-based Yellow Pages publisher R.H. is the large amount of debt they are Daniels says. He sees such a situatioh plaguing McClatchy, which holds nearly $2.
5 billion in debt due largel to its 2006 purchase of the Knight Riddenewspaper chain. “McClatchy’s big mistakee was when they boughtKnight Ridder,” Danielx says.