Seattle publisher faces sale of assets

SEATTLE – The family that owns The Seattle Times may need to sell some assets to ease a “precarious and uncertain” financial situation at the newspaper, Publisher Frank Blethen told employees.

The Seattle Times Co. is attempting to end a joint operating agreement with The Hearst Corp. under which The Times and the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer have shared business functions for the past 20 years.

In a memo sent to employees Thursday, Blethen reasserted his belief that Hearst wants to bleed The Times financially and wrest control of Seattle’s newspaper market by keeping The Times “trapped” in the JOA.

The Seattle Times Co.’s only options are to sell one of its newspapers or sell land at the newspaper’s headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, Blethen wrote. The company owns papers in Maine and Washington, and Blethen described selling any of the papers as “incomprehensible to me.”

Among the papers it owns in Maine are the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville.

The company already is selling surplus property in suburban Renton.

If the Blethen family, which owns a controlling share of The Times Co., ever decides to sell the Times, Hearst has an agreement putting it first in line to buy the paper.

“Based on their history in other cities and their current behavior, it looks like Hearst’s strategy is to bleed the Blethens to force us to sell to them, and then close the P-I,” Blethen wrote.

He cited markets including San Francisco and Houston, where Hearst outlasted competing newspaper owners.

Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer responded: “We have repeatedly denied the allegation and in our court filings have said we intend to keep publishing the P-I as part of the JOA.”

A lawyer for Hearst said financial disclosures show The Times isn’t hurting as much as it claims.

“It’s just flat-out false. Their own documents show it,” said Kelly Corr of Corr Cronin, the Seattle law firm representing Hearst in its suit. “They’re making money hand over fist and they’re crying all the way to the bank.”

He cited an April 2002 statement by Times executives to lenders that they expected operating income to rise steadily during the next several years, from $5.8 million in 2001 to $41.7 million in 2006.

Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin said the company has made severe cutbacks and deferred spending in recent years. Blethen noted in his memo that The Times newspaper’s current revenues are flat compared with last year and about $47 million below where they were in 2000.