SacBee site isn't working, but www.sacbee.com does.

The next few months will bee (cough) interesting to watch, as I work at one of those papers mentioned.

All I have to say is that it could have been Gannett. American journalism dodged a bullet today.

That bullet could still come back around, with 12 former KR papers up for individual sale. Take a look at this thread on VizEds: http://visualeditors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4881

One point about this article struck me. I hadn't heard that the Newspaper Guild was interesting in owning newspapers.

Could someone direct me to where this possiblity is being discussed?

It should be extremely easy for the Guild to tap the capital markets for financing. If Howard Dean could raise millions from grassroots donations on the Internet through a website, how much more could an attempt to free news from corporate dominance and bring back true investigative journalism get from the admittedly free speech fanatics that populate the internet?

Given the populist/protectionist sentiments following the Dubai Ports World debate, a properly framed argument for a non corporate free press would resonate strongly with the American public.

This raises real questions about the wisdom of being a publicly owned news company. Knight Ridder didn't want to sell but was forced to by a stockholder. If they hadn't sold they might have been subject to legal action by that stockholder and others.

I hope this makes companies think twice before going public. Once you go public, the company is, in many ways, no longer yours. It belongs to the stockholders who have a legal right to expect you to run the place profitably. Which isn't a bad thing except in tight times like now when it would be smarter to invest and run at a loss for a while to build for the future.