• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 29, 2011

A group of Massachusetts investors and businessmen are preparing to offer The New York Times Co. more than $200 million for its New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe and the Boston.com Web site, as well as the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and its associated Web site, per a report in The Boston Globe.

The group consists of an unknown number of investors, led by Aaron Kushner, a 38-year-old entrepreneur who made his name selling greeting cards, as the head of Marian Heath Greeting Cards Inc.

As a media outsider, Kushner has spent over a year researching the state of the media business. He says he has a plan to revitalize The Boston Globe and set it on a firm financial footing. To this end, he has recruited former Globe editor Ben Bradlee Jr., and Chris Harte, a former publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Kushner's group of prospective investors includes two members of the Taylor family, which previously owned the Globe: Benjamin and Stephen Taylor.

The bid still isn't official, so there is no indication of NYTCO's willingness to entertain the $200 million offer. But this price tag would be a steep discount from the $1.1 billion paid by NYTCO for The Boston Globe back in 1993. (That would be about $1.7 billion today in inflation-adjusted dollars.)

What's not in question is the state of the NYTCO's New England Media Group, which has taken a beating over the last couple of years. Total revenues at the New England Media Group declined from $675 million in 2005 to $424 million in 2010, a 37.2% drop. Over the same period, total ad revenues fell from $468 million to $214 million for a 54.3% drop. Circulation revenues have remained relatively strong thanks to increased newsstand prices, slipping from $171 million to $167 million from 2005-2010, a 2.4% drop.

The NYTCO first put The Boston Globe (and the rest of the New England Media Group) up for sale in 2009, following an aggressive round of cost-cutting that required lengthy negotiations with unions representing newspaper employees.

NYTCO entertained three offers for the group over the last two years, but passed on all of them -- apparently in the hopes that improving economic conditions might buoy the newspaper's performance and ultimately yield a better price.

In 2008, NYTCO also considered selling its 17.5% stake in New England Sports Ventures, which owns the Boston Red Sox.