The Tampa Bay Times is definitely not for sale, so says Paul Tash, chair and CEO of Times Publishing Co.
The much-publicized purchase of the Washington Post this week by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos prompted Jo-Lynn Brown of the Tampa Bay Business Journal to ask Tash if the Times were also on the market. The sale of the Post to Bezos puts the once-publically traded newspaper group back in private hands.
Tash said several times that the paper is not for sale, and discussed the “foresight” of Times founder Nelson Poynter when he gave the paper to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies after his passing in 1978. That kept the St. Petersburg-based daily private.
Compare that to recent purchases of The Post and The Boston Globe, where formerly public properties change to private ownership, removing the need to publish regular financial reports to shareholders.
How much would the Times be worth? According to Brown, the Times’ circulation is higher than the Globe, but less than the Post. Some calculations put a selling price somewhere between $17 million and $180 million.
The Tampa Tribune recently sold for $9.5 million, or about $50 per subscriber, whereas Bezos’ price tag for The Post was $250 million, or $527 per subscriber. The Globe fell in between, bought by Red Sox owner John Henry for $70 million, or $285 per subscriber.
