After corporate owner Media General fired 165 Tampa Tribune staffers in December, rumors grew louder about the fragility of the Trib's future prospects.
Rumors will continue to circulate with Media General's press release today, which confirmed that the company "is exploring the potential sale of newspaper operations." The statement said the company has received inquiries from "several third parties" regarding purchase of some of its papers. Media General owns 23 papers across the Southeast.
"We just felt as a company that it was time to issue a press release," Ray Kozakewicz, a spokesman for Media General, told CL this afternoon. "There's no pending transaction." He would not specify which properties the "third parties" were asking about.
He added that the information was released to let investors and employees know the latest about what was happening with the company. "It's come up several times on our conference calls, investor calls," he said.
This article appears in Feb 23-29, 2012.