By: After Landmark Communications, Inc., announced that it is considering selling its businesses, Baltimore Sun Co. officials are exploring a bid for Landmark papers in nearby Anne Arundel and Carroll counties, the (Baltimore) Sun reported Sunday.
A business development team plans to contact Landmark during the due diligence phase, according to Timothy J. Thomas, Baltimore Sun vice president of business development
"And we are investigating as we speak," he said. "Does this make sense for us? Why does it make sense, and then what's the next step?"
Family-owned Landmark, of Norfolk, Va., owns The Capital of Annapolis and the Carroll County Times and several weeklies in Anne Arundel County. The Sun has a bureau in Annapolis, but closed its Carroll County bureau last month. Both counties are part of The Sun's core circulation area.
However, acquiring established papers in its coverage area could raise antitrust concerns, said John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc., a Silver Spring media consulting firm.
"It would enlarge The Sun's footprint in their region, which is usually a desirable thing for a newspaper to do," he said. An issue is "whether the Justice Department would feel it would be too much ownership by one company of media within a fairly well-defined geographic area."
Last month, The Sun's current corporate parent, Tribune Co., completed its $8.2 billion sale to real estate billionaire Sam Zell and an employee stock ownership plan.
Landmark is parent to nine daily papers, including The Roanoke Times in Virginia and The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., and more than 100 nondaily newspapers and specialty publications. It also owns the Weather Channel, television stations in Las Vegas and Nashville, Tenn., and Norfolk-based Dominion Enterprises, a national chain of classified-ad publications.
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