• The New York Times, Friday, March 21, 2008 11:30 AM

Three media moguls have apparently set their caps for Tribune Company's Newsday, the Long Island daily, according to insiders. The interested trio are Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp. and owner of the New York Post; Mort Zuckerman, real estate developer and owner of The New York Daily News; and James Dolan, whose family controls Cablevision. The sale process is described as a "soft auction" wherein bankers approach a select group of buyers and could lead to various kinds of deals.

Murdoch, for one, is considering a deal that would create a joint venture between the Post and Newsday that would combine back-office operations. Tribune, controlled by Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell, recently reported a 2007 profit of $86.9 million, down from $594 million. Its newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and The Orlando Sentinel, seem to be losing ad revenue even faster than the industry as a whole, due to heavy exposure to slumping California and Florida real estate markets.

Zell has said that he doesn't want to sell any of the papers but in recent newsroom visits, has told staffers that the company's financial position was weaker than he anticipated. John Morton, a newspaper analyst, estimates that Newsday might fetch $350 million to $400 million, though he cautions it is a hard price to fix as Tribune does not report the performance of individual publications.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »