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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 1/10/2007 4:35:46 PM
Title: Rocky ME: Sale of Scripps papers not imminent
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
Memo from Rocky Mountain News managing editor Deb Goeken

From: Goeken, Deb
Sent: Wed 1/10/2007 11:58 AM
To: RMN Editorial Group
Subject: Scripps question

Everyone: I'm attaching the E&P story on Scripps just in case there's one of you who hasn't seen it today.

I want to reassure everyone that there is no sale imminent. Business reporter David Milstead interviewed a company executive this morning who said it's important to note that nowhere in the question and answer did a Scripps exec discuss an outright sale. Instead, there was some talk of splitting the company into its newspaper and non-newspaper components to take advantage of the stock market valuation of the company's popular cable network offerings.

It's also important to put this question into the context of the newspaper industry. It is the question of the day, and Scripps executives had to be ready to answer it in a prudent way. As [editor] John [Temple] told me this morning, it was an honest answer by leaders of a public company to a question that is being asked of every newspaper company in the industry.

John, by the way, is on the road at some of our other Scripps newspaper properties, working with them to make their papers better, not prepare them for a sale.

I'm attaching the actual transcript of the question, so that you can read it. Also, the audio version of the conference is on Scripps' Web site.

Meantime, my best advice is to do what we always do - focus on great journalism and putting out the best newspaper we can.

Come see me if you have any more questions.

Thanks, Deb
..........................

Transcript:

Company Representative: Sure, I'm sorry. Can you hear me all right? We have - we think a lot about deconsolidation and we spent a fair amount of time probably over the next six months looking at different scenarios for the company. I think if you peel it back clearly the most advantages really would been in some former fashion set the newspaper business from the rest of the business. We’ve looked to broadcasting a fair amount. We don’t think it really moves the needle it is too small a piece on one hand. And on the other hand that seems to have done a much better job of preserving value of those assets are much more I think stable over the long call lease in terms of their retention of value and maybe even in that cash flow, newspaper seem to be much more trouble and its hard to call a bottom there so I, as we think about it, we think about ways to isolate the effects of the newspapers on the total. We is to go back as far from this question as to where they are not there was significant value to be created in the separation or reversal that there is some damage being done to stock by the inclusion of newspapers in the mix and I think up to until this last year probably wasn’t that clear. I think we collectively feel like there is some damage we spend a fair amount of time with the board and with the member of the trust talking about options of the newspapers side.

We’ve reached no conclusions, and it's fair to say, but we do believe that there probably is some value to be created and looking at a structural alternative there, maybe one and involves little more debt in the capital structure and maybe some former separating the newspaper side but again very preliminary thoughts, lots of discussions, lots of hurdles for us, there is a ownership requirement or control requirement for the trust to continue to control newspaper company so that's a hurdle to get over. So anyway lots of thoughts spending a fair amount of time on it, we are sort of at this point think convince that there is some value to be found we don't know how much that’s up to you all. But it's a question that’s being actively addressed at the moment.

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