MediaNews May Soon Manage Salt Lake Paper

By: Mark Fitzgerald When William Dean Singleton bought The Salt Lake Tribune from the AT&T Corp. in January of last year, plenty of people wondered whether his MediaNews Group Inc. would ever actually run the newspaper.

After all, the Tribune is published under a joint operating agreement with a dissatisfied partner, The Deseret News, and subject to a complicated management-and-purchase-option agreement with former minority owners.

Now, Singleton's Denver-based chain looks increasingly likely to begin managing the paper July 31. On Wednesday, The Deseret News board of directors voted to withhold the consent needed for the Tribune's McCarthey family managers, incorporated as the Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co. (SLTP), to exercise their option to buy the Tribune from MediaNews. That option is effective after July 31 -- the same day the agreement permitting SLTP to manage the Tribune expires. A federal judge ruled in May that SLTP can buy the paper after July 31, but only if the News lets it. A July 17 court date is set on SLTP's request to manage the Tribune past the expiration date.

In a letter to SLTP Chairman Philip McCarthey, News Chairman Glen Snarr wrote that Tribune managers had undermined the News by blocking its desire to move to morning publication.