'Salt Lake Tribune' Publisher To Retire

By: Paul Foy, AP Business Writer (AP) The publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune said Wednesday he plans to retire next week, even as the former family-owned newspaper continued to fight a takeover.

"I assume I'll be out of here," said Dominic Welch, publisher for the past eight years and a 37-year Tribune employee. "I have no intention of sitting here and arguing the point."

Welch, 69, made his plans as the Tribune's longtime executives on Wednesday appealed a federal court order forcing them to relinquish control of Utah's largest paper to MediaNews Group Co. of Denver on Aug. 1.

The Tribune was taken over in 1997 by cable TV giant Tele-Communications Inc. in a lucrative stock swap. TCI promised to return the paper to the McCarthey family this summer, but the plan has been blocked, for now, by a series of corporate takeovers and the opposition of the Mormon church-owned Deseret News.

Chief Operating Officer Randy Frisch said he had no plans to step aside. "The judge did not say that Dominic and I should clear out," said Frisch, 43.

Welch said he didn't want a confrontation. "Randy would like to sit and fight, but I don't want him to get hurt," Welch said. "I think Randy will go with me."

The McCartheys' lawyers plan to ask the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to keep Welch and Frisch in place temporarily as the family tries to exercise a disputed purchase option.

U.S. District Court Judge Ted Stewart ruled Monday that the McCartheys must relinquish the paper Aug. 1, when their right to continue operating it expires.

Stewart said the family knew the risks when they agreed to the stock swap. They "were largely in charge of their own destiny" and got what they "bargained for," he decided.

That ruling cleared the way for MediaNews, which owns The Denver Post and 48 other daily papers, to take full control of the Tribune for the first time since buying it 19 months ago.

MediaNews bought the paper for $200 million from AT&T, which inherited the Tribune when it bought Tele-Communications Inc. in 1999.

Salt Lake City's other daily, The Deseret News, which has been published under a joint operating agreement with the Tribune, has said the McCartheys' purchase option isn't valid without its consent. The News announced last month it will not give that approval.

MediaNews Chairman Richard B. Scudder and Vice Chairman and CEO Dean Singleton plan to show up next week to take over the Tribune and pay customary visits to state dignitaries.

Singleton will replace Welch as chairman of the Newspaper Agency Corp., which prints, delivers, and handles advertising for the two Salt Lake City papers. MediaNews President Joseph J. Lodovic will replace Frisch as a board member for the agency.