Tribune Publishing Considers New Offer From Surprise Bidders

After considering the bid from Mr. Bainum last month, Tribune said it still favored the agreement with Alden, which had solid financing. At the same time, the board informed Mr. Bainum that he was free to find backers to make his offer more attractive. He did just that by joining with Mr. Wyss.

Journalists in Tribune newsrooms have been sharply critical of Alden, which already owns roughly 32 percent of the company, as a potential owner. Alden is the proprietor of some 60 daily newspapers across the country through MediaNews Group and is known for making deep cuts at publications it controls as it tries to wring profits out of struggling companies. Alden says its strategy keeps newspapers from going out of business.

In an interview last month, Mr. Wyss, 85, said he was partly inspired to join Mr. Bainum by a Times opinion essay in which two then-Chicago Tribune reporters, David Jackson and Gary Marx, warned that Alden would create “a ghost version of The Chicago Tribune.” Tribune journalists at other papers have led campaigns to persuade local benefactors to buy Tribune Publishing or at least one of its papers.

Mr. Wyss, the former chief executive of the medical device company Synthes, has a home in Wyoming. A decade ago, he led the sale of Synthes to Johnson Johnson for roughly $20 billion. Since then, he has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help preserve wildlife habitats in Wyoming, Montana, Maine and elsewhere. He has also been a major donor to liberal groups seeking to shape American politics, including the Center for American Progress, where he serves on the board.

Mr. Wyss said in the interview with The Times last month that he had joined the effort to buy Tribune because of his belief in the need for a robust press. “I don’t want to see another newspaper that has a chance to increase the amount of truth being told to the American people going down the drain,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/05/business/media/tribune-publishing-newspapers-alden.html