Sun chain kills South St. Paul-IGH community paper, or Ding Dong the Witch is About to Die

The story below is from MinnPost.com. It looks as if our local liberal, left-leaning rag is in its death throws as it is in massive debt to its creditors. I recently talked to an account executive at Sun Current Newspapers and was informed that not only is it being discontinued in South Saint Paul and Inver Grove Heights, but West Saint Paul and Mendota Heights as well! So we can say goodbye to our little media outlet that caters to the liberal point of view. Boo hoo.


Sun chain kills South St. Paul-IGH community paper

By David Brauer | Published Wed, Feb 25 2009 10:35 am

There's a perception out there that smaller, closer-to-the-ground community papers might weather the economic storm better than their big cousins. Locally, there's good reason to believe that, since several operations carry little or no debt.

Sun Newspapers is not among them. I wrote about them twice last summer; in July, a share of stock in their parent corporation, American Community Newspapers, had fallen from $5.63 a year earlier to 16 cents, largely due to a punishing $136 million debt burden.

Since then, the debt has risen, and ACNI stock is worth eight-tenths of a cent. In August, the AMEX exchange booted the company; a September filing said the company had defaulted on $145 million in debt, and in November, the company stopped making public financial reports.

Since everything has only gone to hell economically since then, I started wondering how these guys have managed to stay out of Chapter 11. Last week, I began an email dance with the company's spokesperson (I wanted an interview with a top executive; they've asked for questions in advance). Today, I received a memo with at least one small but concrete indication of stress.


Read the memo and the rest of the story here,

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2009/02/25/6962/sun_chain_kills_south_st_paul-igh_community_paper