Romenesko

Twin Cities City Pages
Star Tribune economics reporter Mike Meyers says the sale of his paper is easy to understand: McClatchy management screwed up and put itself in a position where it had to sell something to pay its tax bill. "It's very straightforward," he tells Steve Perry, McClatchy execs "bought something they couldn't afford" when they purchased Knight Ridder for $4.1 billion plus another $2 billion in assumed debt in March 2006. "And they had to sell the family silver to make their first mortgage payment. They had to sell 12 papers up front to help pay for it, and it seems obvious that it was only later on they realized that the capital gains from those sales were going to mean a big tax bill."