The Tampa Bay Times announced Monday that a federal pension agency has placed multi-million dollar liens on property owned by Times Publishing Company, the parent company of that newspaper. The liens also affect property owned by Poynter, which owns the Times Publishing Company.
The liens, which amount to more than $30 million, were placed on the organizations by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, a federal agency created to ensure the viability of benefit plans, reports Times senior correspondent Susan Taylor Martin. Collectively, they constitute “the difference between the pension plan’s current assets and the calculation of all future benefits,” she writes.
Jana Jones, the vice president and CFO of Times Publishing Company, is quoted by Martin as saying the liens figure into the company’s strategy to defer contributions to its pension plans:
As we have previously acknowledged, the Times received approval to delay some of its contributions to the pension plan during the economic recession and recovery,” said Jana Jones, vice president and CFO of Times Publishing, which publishes the Tampa Bay Times. “Related to these approvals, the Times agreed to provide collateral to the PBCG. These liens are part of this process.
Earlier this year, the Tampa Bay Times announced it was putting its St. Petersburg headquarters on sale to help pay down a $28 million debt owed to Boston-based finance company Crystal Financial. According to Martin’s story, the liens will probably not affect that sale.
Jones tells the Tampa Bay Times that the newspaper’s parent company is $10 million behind on its contributions to its pension fund, which currently has assets exceeding $100 million.
Like many regional newspapers, the Tampa Bay Times has faced significant financial headwinds as the advertising model that traditionally sustained print journalism was transformed by digital news. In 2014, the paper offered a round of buyouts in advance of job cuts. Last year Times Publishing Company CEO Paul Tash sent a memo to employees advising them to have “a frank conversation” with their supervisors if they felt their futures with the newspaper was uncertain.
However, the paper is hiring again, and Tash told Columbia Journalism Review in April that he was “bullish” on the company’s prospects in 2015.