Ex-Exec: AT&T Sold 'Tribune' For Political Gain

By: Paul Foy, AP Business Writer (AP) AT&T Corp. sold The Salt Lake Tribune out from under a family that ran it for four generations to protect its "political interests" in Utah, where it has a monopoly on cable television systems, a former AT&T executive said Wednesday.

MediaNews Group Inc. of Denver is set to take over the Tribune on Thursday despite protests by the McCarthey family, which is trying to recover ownership of the paper. AT&T sold it to MediaNews even though the McCartheys held an option to buy it.

AT&T was motivated by the Tribune's history of taking on the Mormon church and mistreating the church-owned Deseret News, a junior partner in a joint operating agreement, said Leo J. Hindery Jr., former president and chief executive of AT&T Broadband & Internet Services.

"The last thing I needed was a lawsuit," Hindery told The Associated Press. "It was politically important because (most) of the state is Mormon and the church owns The Deseret News. The Tribune was acting as a bad guy."

Hindery elaborated on a document unsealed in federal court on Tuesday that warned the Tribune represented "serious threats to AT&T's political interests in the state."

AT&T never was threatened with political reprisal, he said, but felt pressure to protect a string of cable television franchises in Utah with 260,000 subscribers.

"If you owned every gas station in the state and were getting sued (by a powerful interest), you'd hate it," he said.

In July 1999, Hindery was trying to persuade a powerful AT&T board member to go along with a sale of the Tribune to the Deseret News.

The News considered options such as buying the paper but taking no editorial control or closing it. It also was fighting with Tribune managers to switch the News to morning publication. Because of the joint operating agreement, the Tribune must give its OK for the News to switch to mornings.

Hindery wrote that the "great outcome" of such a sale would be "the good will we will have preserved with the Mormon church and the political leadership of the state."

Phil McCarthey, chairman of the management group losing control of the Tribune, contends AT&T capitulated to the Mormon church by snubbing his family and selling the paper to MediaNews in January 2001.

MediaNews owns The Denver Post and 48 other dailies. It had to wait until this week, when the McCarthey's management contract expires, to take full control of the Tribune.

AT&T Corp. had inherited the Tribune when it took over cable television company Tele-Communications Inc. in 1999. TCI bought the Tribune to recover a block of stock held by Tribune owners.

The McCarthey family kept editorial control with an option to buy back the paper by this summer, but the Deseret News is using the JOA to block them.