To catch you up: Richard Connor was publisher of the Star-Telegram from 1986 to 1997 (then called the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before it dropped the “Fort Worth” in an effort to woo Arlington and the richer parts of northern Tarrant County). He also owned the Fort Worth Business Press, which he and his wife sold in 2007 — and then repurchased in 2010.
But before he repurchased the FWBP, in 2006, he bought the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader for $65 million. Now, that’s a lot of dough. Connor had some help from his buddies at HM Capital Partners, which helped secure $45 million in financing through Goldman Sachs. You know HM Capital better as Hick Muse Tate & Furst (or at least I do).
That’s the background. The new stuff: according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court, the Times Leader was sold for just $5 million (not to mention the debt that came with the price). And Connor “forced The Times Leader to set aside cash for his personal use and ordered the newspaper to pay his personal credit card charges … . The newspaper’s executives thought they had ‘reached an understanding’ with Mr. Connor that the expenses covered by the company were loans that needed to be repaid … . [But] Mr. Connor never paid back the loans and instead ‘challenged the validity of the very written acknowledgments which bear his own signature.'”
Anyone these days can run a newspaper into the ground. That’s easy. But doing it while setting aside cash for your personal use? That takes moxie.
