Murdoch may buy Newsday

Crain's NY Business, citing "one newspaper industry insider," says News Corp. has already made a bid on Tribune Co.’s Long Island paper. There were no details in the report, though it comes on the day that Tribune acknowledged that it may have to sell assets as it struggles past a December deal to take the company private (CEO Sam Zell telegraphed as much the other week). In bizspeak, Tribune said it has "begun a strategic review of certain Tribune assets to determine whether capital can be more effectively redeployed into our core operations or toward reducing our outstanding leverage." In other words, Tribune will need to sell stuff in order to handle all the debt it assumed as part of the deal to go private.

Tribune posted a fourth-quarter loss of $79 million, weighed down by charges related to the going-private deal. Net income was $239 million in the year-earlier fourth quarter. Operating revenue dropped 7% in the fourth quarter, adjusted for an extra reporting week compared with a year earlier (here's the release). “Our goal when we started this adventure was to keep all the assets together,” Zell said to the employees. “We also started with the assumption that print [advertising] would be down two or three percent this year, not 18 percent.” Actually, Murdoch has had his eye on Newsday for some time, going back to about a year ago when Tribune was on the block. Any deal for Newsday will raise a number of regulatory issues, since News Corp. already owns the NY Post and the WSJ, which is based in NY. Of course, it's also bound to raise speculation about other Tribune properties being available. The LAT? Not likely, since the company heavily relies on Times revenue and cash flow. But in this environment, it would be hard to rule anything out.