The New York Times Co receives six bids for The Boston Globe: report

The New York Times Co has received six bids for The Boston Globe, the US media reported after the auction of the daily newspaper closed yesterday evening at 5 pm in the US.

Although The Times Co splurged $1.1 billion in buying the Globe in 1993 from the Taylor family, it will receive a mere $100 million or less than 10 per cent of its investment.
The Boston Globe yesterday said that among the bidders were is former Time Inc. chief executive Jack Griffin, two members of the Taylor family, former Globe president Rick Daniels and partner Heb Ryan, a Boston private equity executive, Robert Loring, owner of the Tampa Tribune, and John Gormally Jr. of  BusinessWest Magazine and Red Sox owner John Henry and his Fenway Sports Group.

In February, The Times Co said it was exploring a sale of the New England Media Group, including The Boston Globe and its related online properties, for which had hired investment banker Evercore Partners as an adviser for the sale.

The move came more than three years after the Times Co. tried unsuccessfully to sell The Globe after several months of scouring for buyers but failing to draw satisfactory bids due to the global recession.

The New York Times Co had then put the 141-year-old Massachusetts-based The Boston Globe, the 17th-largest daily newspaper in the US by paid circulation, on the block along with the Red Sox baseball team in order to finance a $400-million revolving credit line.

The publisher had threatened to close the newspaper in 2009 due to wage cut issues with labor unions.

The Globe was until recent years one of the top US papers and is currently the 23rd-largest newspaper, has a strong international, national and local reporting staff that rivaled its bigger competitors like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times.

However, like all US newspapers, which have seen over 12,500 job cuts, The Boston Globe has been forced to cut back on operations due to a fall in advertising revenues as readers opt for free online news.

The Globe has seen a 1.7-per cent decline in circulation sales last year and a drop in ad revenue by 7.8 per cent to $183 million in the same period.

The Boston Sunday Globe's paid circulation was 372,541, according to the Chicago-based Audit Bureau, up 3.4 per cent from a year earlier, while daily circulation was 230,351, up by 11.9 per cent.

Most of the US print newspapers have been struggling since the 2007 recession and many small regional newspapers have recently been bought by investors like Warren Buffett, who sees growth despite analysts seeing a dead end for the print media.

Some large papers that have recently been put on sale have found no takers, while others are undergoing restructuring like News Corp's plans to spin-off its print business, which includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and MarketWatch.

The Tribune Co is in talks with investment bankers to explore a sale of some of its newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.