Confused Billionaire Needed to Purchase Austin American-Statesman

Cox Enterprises, Inc. announced plans to sell the Austin American-Statesman and the paper’s Web site, Austin360.com, along with 28 other daily and weekly newspapers. The company, which hopes to have the deal done by the first quarter of 2009, will retain control of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Dayton Daily News and the Palm Beach Post.

Cox wants out of the newspaper business to focus on its other properties. According to a memo obtained by Romenesko, “Approximately 80 percent of Cox Enterprises’ revenues now come from sources other than its traditional advertising-supported media companies (newspapers, television and radio).”

But in this struggling environment, who’s going to buy the Statesman? John Morton, an analyst with Morton Research Inc., thinks the deal might take “more than months to do,” but admits, “There may be some guy with a few billion dollars that he doesn’t know what to do with that may step up tomorrow.”

That can’t possibly be Cox’s hope, can it? That some moron with money will step up to take the papers off its hands? Actually yes. When asked who might buy the Statesman, its publisher Mike Laosa said, “Anyone who has a checkbook big enough.”

Like Hearst, perhaps?

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