Blethen buyer's media muscle flexes in Maine
Editor's note: This is a revised version of the story that originally ran Feb. 23, 2009.
The high-profile names associated with Maine Media Investments have largely outshined the real architect of a bid to buy Blethen Maine Newspapers. Richard Connor, the man behind the deal, has teamed up with HM Capital Partners of Dallas, Texas, to acquire the company from the Seattle Times Co. and hopes to ink a deal within about a month. As the Bangor native and longtime newspaperman works to arrange financing, a look at his background reveals a history of shrewd deal-making and often bitter relations with labor unions.
Connor, 61, now serves as editor and publisher at the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Penn., which he bought from the McClatchy Co. in 2006 for $65 million, again partnering with HM Capital. In Maine, Connor more than a year ago brought together former Defense Secretary William Cohen, developer (and the governor’s brother) Bob Baldacci and Portland developer Michael Liberty to bid for Maine’s largest newspaper company, Connor told Mainebiz.
The men’s visibility was crucial to arranging the deal, but it was Connor’s baby all along, he readily pointed out. “Who have you heard of, Bill Cohen or Richard Connor?” he asked. The men may not even invest capital in the venture. “As this moves forward, Maine Media really declines substantially in terms of its influence and involvement,” he said.
Connor’s past deal-making has earned him both industry praise and harsh criticism from former union adversaries. His career at the Times Leader dates back to 1978, when during his first stint at the paper he oversaw one of the most contentious strikes in the history of The Newspaper Guild. That year, Capital Cities Communications bought the family-owned paper and from the get-go became embroiled in bitter contract negotiations, according to Thomas Keil, a sociologist at Arizona State University who wrote a book about the strike. Connor, working at a Capital Cities paper in Michigan, arrived three days after the strike began and was named publisher within a month. “He was seen as a tyrant,” said Keil. “The workers hated him.” Capital Cities sought to professionalize the staff, said Keil, and Connor was immediately met with antagonism. The union members left to start their own paper, the Citizen’s Voice, which to this day remains the Times Leader’s rival, making Wilkes-Barre one of the few remaining two-newspaper cities. “The dispute in Wilkes-Barre was so intense, even today, 31 years later, with changes in leadership and everything, some people still call the Times Leader the scab paper,” said Paul Golias, former managing editor of the Citizen’s Voice and one of the original strikers.
The rift hit the Times Leader hard, but Connor built the paper back up, Golias acknowledged. “He did bring the paper back. Their circulation was pummeled in ’78.” Connor, a conservative, is well thought of in the industry, according to Tim Williams, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. “They’ve been able to hold their own or grow,” he said of the paper. “He’s a pretty sharp businessman.”
The Times Leader is smaller than the Portland Press Herald, with a daily circulation of about 40,000 and 53,000 on Sunday, compared to the Portland paper’s roughly 70,000 daily and 115,000 on Sunday. As for Blethen’s other holdings, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta has a circulation of about 14,000, and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville has about 18,000.
The Wilkes-Barre Publishing Co., which Connor started in 2006 to buy the paper, also owns several weeklies in Pennsylvania. Twenty years earlier, he had left the city to spend a decade as publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas, another Capital Cities newspaper. In the 1990s, he ran a Texas company that published papers in four states. His return to Pennsylvania arose under circumstances parallel to those here in Maine — he assembled a group of local investors to scoop up the city’s paper upon word of a sale.
Connor’s role in the 1978 strike may date back decades, but union members in Maine knew all about it. Capital Cities earned a reputation, particularly among its newspapers, as a union buster. At the Oakland Press of Pontiac, Mich., where Connor was editor before the company first sent him to Pennsylvania, Capital Cities broke a yearlong strike in 1978. The company was co-founded by none other than Daniel Burke, who owns the Portland Sea Dogs and knows Connor well. Capital Cities later acquired the much-larger ABC television network before being purchased by Disney in 1996. Burke retired in 1994 and is not involved in the Blethen deal, Connor said.
In Maine, Blethen has sued the Newspaper Guild so a buyer won’t have to honor terms of its contract with the union. Both sides have agreed to postpone arbitration pending a sale. Tom Bell, a reporter at the Press Herald and president of the Guild, said union members were at first wary of Connor. “Both sides had to overcome their stereotypes and put all that behind us and start something new,” he said. Connor has proven accommodating and the union thinks he’d serve the paper well, Bell said. Both sides have discussed concessions, including a wage freeze and longer work week, in exchange for an employee stock ownership plan and union member seats on the board of directors, he said. “We’ve found him to be a very flexible and honest person to deal with.”
The union has been receptive and kind in its negotiations so far, Connor said. “I have found the union leadership has been extremely open, communicative and willing to listen to new ideas.” In Pennsylvania, his company just ended its third consecutive year of record profits, despite industry-wide declining advertising revenues, he said. If the sale goes through, he plans to leverage local content and expertise, improve customer service and reposition the company toward new media. The veteran newspaperman has no doubt that Blethen’s plummeting cash flow problems can be overcome. “People still want to read and advertise in newspapers,” Connor said. “You can have a profitable business running a newspaper.”
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