By: Mark Fitzgerald More than a year after putting the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and its other Maine papers on the auction block, Seattle Times Co. late Monday announced it had made the sale.
Buying the Blethen Maine Newspapers is MaineToday Media Inc., a consortium led by veteran editor and publisher Rich Connor.
Connor will be the editor and publisher of the Press Herald and the two other dailies in the sale, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and Morning Sentinel in Waterville.
Terms of the sale will not be disclosed, the Times Co. said. Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, the Santa Fe, N.M.-based brokerage, had been engaged to sell the papers.
The sale of the Maine papers was just one money-raising strategy for the Blethen family-owned Times Co., which is struggling with debt and the newspaper industry recession.
In a statement announcing the sale, Frank Blethen, chairman of Blethen Maine Newspapers and publisher of the flagship Seattle Times, said the family had been reluctant to sell the papers, which the company bought in 1998. He noted that his great-grandfather, Alden Blethen, who founded the Seattle Times in 1896, was a Maine native.
But the family concluded they "needed to focus their attention on their Washington state newspapers," Blethen said.
"Local, independent newspaper ownership best serves communities and we are pleased Rich Connor was able to put together a group to buy Blethen
Maine Newspapers," he added.
In an article posted on the Press Herald Web site, Connor said he planned "no immediate changes." However, the article by staff writer David Hench noted that 31 non-union employees had been notified they would not be retained when the ownership changed.
Connor also told the paper there could be further cuts of another 100 employees.
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