Blue City Media Deathwatch: Death Before Solvency!

Their few attempts at even the most cursory balance - having a conservative op-ed columnist a few times a month - have led to near mutinies on the staff.  And the remaining members of the editorial board and "Columnists' Row" seem to be vying for the title "Most Blinkered and Unquestioning Leftist" - or, let's be honest, for a job with a Democrat communication office or one of Minneapolis's infamously left-of-center public relations firms when the layoff scythe finally and inevitably catches up with them.  

The Strib is in huge financial trouble.  Last year, they closed down their printing facility in Minneapolis and farmed (heh) it out to a printer in Des Moines, and axed a bunch of jobs.   

And it still wasn't enough. 

The paper has been in talks to find a buyer - including, according to some sources, a sale to local conservative outlet AlphaNews:

Minnesota Star Tribune owner Glen Taylor is denying that he explored a sale of the state’s largest newspaper to right-wing news outlet Alpha News.

Alpha News claimed in an article Monday that its lawyers had engaged in negotiations with Star Tribune ownership, prompting billionaire Taylor to issue a statement, saying he’s “never been interested in selling the Minnesota Star Tribune to Alpha News and is committed to keeping the Strib strong and independent long into the future.”

Alpha and its attorney pushed back on the pushback:

“When I saw that, my first reaction was, well that’s terrific then, can you pay me for my wasted time? Why were you having your number-one lawyer deal with me to negotiate a non-disclosure agreement if you had no intention of doing it in the first place?” Madel said when reacting to Taylor’s statement on WCCO Radio Tuesday with Chad Hartman.

“It makes absolutely no sense,” he added. “I was dealing with one of the highest lawyers within the Taylor Corporation’s organization so obviously somebody was taking it seriously there.”

Hartman then asked Madel how Alpha News could even afford to purchase the Star Tribune.

“Chad, for years I have been hearing rumors from clients, not Alpha News but other lawyers in town, that the Taylor Organization was looking to sell the Star Tribune for $1,” Madel replied. “And they were looking to sell it because of its enormous debts, specifically its pension liabilities. That it’s not making any money, they’re shoveling money into it, they need somebody to take it over because it’s hemorrhaging money.”

Is Alpha in the running?  

Who knows?   

What is clear is that, even as the paper sheds another 15% of its staff and cuts more into the newsroom, the powers that be at the Strib would rather gargle Drano than see their paper survive under conservative owners:

The Star Tribune has 495 employees, including a newsroom of 200 journalists. The cuts will affect every department and the newsroom will be reduced to 175 people, the Star Tribune said.

CEO Steve Grove told employees in an email that the company will also explore becoming a nonprofit owned by a foundation. The newspaper is currently owned by Minnesota billionaire Glen Taylor, who bought it in 2014. 

“Grove said [owner Glen] Taylor has ‘only ever invested money in its future and never once taken a profit from it,’ but that it was time to make a long-term plan for the organization’s future stewardship,” the Star Tribune’s reporting says. 

In other words, in a market crowded with other non-profit news sources, several of which seems to be "Plan B" jobs for laid-off Strib staffers, they want to become another. 

And non-profit money usually comes with strings attached - as the Strib no doubt knows even from the dilitory coverage they did give to Minnesota's non-profit fraud scandals.  

I suspect owner Glen Taylor's top five options in order of preference are:

1. A big (and gullible) liberal investor
2. non-profit status
3. death
4. a slow, painful death
5. Sale to a conservative buyer. 

Follow the story in the Strib. 

After the truck arrives from Iowa, of course.