The Chicago Sun-Times could be in for a wild ride, should two super-rich British brothers secure control of embattled press baron Conrad Black’s media holdings and decide to make a go of it in the U.S.
Black stunned critics and shareholders alike Sunday when he announced plans to sell his controlling shares in Sun-Times parent Hollinger International Inc. to David Barclay and his 69-year-old twin brother, Frederick Barclay, for $326.5 million plus $140 million in debt. Now the question becomes whether the brothers will keep all or part of Hollinger’s media assets, which also include the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post.
“It’s a mystery as to what they intend to do,” said Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor at London’s City University and a former editor of the Daily Mirror tabloid paper. “They could sell off the Sun-Times and Jerusalem Post to help pay off debts, but they also could well have ambitions on a global media empire.”
There are new indications that the brothers may want to hang on to much of what they have said would be a relatively small slice of their $2 billion empire, which includes The Ritz Hotel in London and four British newspapers that make up their Press Holdings International Ltd. group.
“We are in this for the long haul,” said David Barclay, speaking Monday to the U.K. daily paper The Guardian. There are going to be “synergies” with his other papers, he added, which fit in well with the newspaper industry’s drive to cut costs.
The Barclays currently control four newspapers: London-based The Business and Scotland’s The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and The Edinburgh Evening News.
One thing Greenslade is sure about is that Andrew Neil, the aggressive publisher and media brains behind the Barclays’ Press Holdings group, would be eager to keep all the papers and run them himself.
“Andrew Neil will absolutely want them,” Greenslade said. “He might not have played a role in the deal, but he’s the leading media figure and only one at the group with any media experience. He will be salivating at the idea of getting his hands on the papers.”
The 54-year-old Scotland-born Neil was a highly successful editor of Britain’s premier broadsheet newspaper, the Sunday Times, from 1983 through 1994. Known for his forthright nature and quick decisions on hiring and firing, he also spent a short time in summer 1994 in New York as executive editor of Fox TV as it took its first steps into network news.
However, in 1994 he fell out of favor with Sunday Times owner Rupert Murdoch–head of News Corp., the parent of Fox and satellite broadcaster DirecTV. Neil’s memoir, “Full Disclosure,” which was published in 1996, details his time with the media magnate.
“What Neil wants more than anything is to show that Rupert Murdoch made a mistake,” Greenslade said. “He wants to show that he might not have the money, but he’s still a global player.”
Neil did not return calls.
But for several months, those close to the media-savvy publisher and editor said, he has been trying to expand the group’s media interests overseas.
He was recently in talks with Dublin’s Ireland on Sunday, La Tribune in Paris and Il Giornale in Milan in an attempt to strike partnership deals to extend the reach of The Business, the most financially distressed of the four papers he runs as part of the Barclays’ newspaper arm.
Other moves to expand into Turkey, Germany and the U.S. are being looked at, according to one Neil lieutenant.
“I want to give [the Barclays] a truly global business brand in return,” Neil said last summer, speaking of his expansionist plans to one British magazine.
Those who have worked closely with him caution Chicagoans about getting too excited over the possible ownership of the Sun-Times by a Neil-run, Barclay-backed operation.
“They have a very unproven track record,” said Tim Luckhurst, one of six editors in eight years of The Scotsman, the most profitable of the Barclay brothers’ newspaper holdings. Neil has been through five since he joined the brothers’ operations shortly after they bought the paper in late 1995.
“I have never thought of the Barclays as having overseas ambitions, but the fact that they run an international operation suggests that they may have ambitions in that area. It’s a case of swapping one unproven newspaper proprietor in Black for a less well-known proprietor in the Barclays.”
Luckhurst said the potential new owners are not afraid to splash the cash but often have mixed results.
He estimates that more than $110 million was pumped into The European newspaper, an ill-fated publication that Neil took over running in 1996–three years before it closed in 1999.
Neil himself has boasted about his plans to boost the circulation of The Business, the ailing Sunday business paper at which he claims to have spent more than $60 million on revamps and redesigns. Neil is now busy trying to grab readers by handing out free copies of the paper distributed as inserts in more established papers.
And The Scotsman, a relatively small paper that has a powerful influence in its homeland, has seen the circulation fall from 100,000 in November 2000 to 74,000. After Neil slashed the price of the paper, readers came but swiftly left when the cost of buying the paper went back up.
Sun-Times journalists might also be wary about the Barclays’ claims that they adhere to a hands-off approach to their papers’ editorial processes, Luckhurst said.
“The Barclays aren’t in this to make money. They can make more from a good property deal in one afternoon than they can from owning newspapers,” said Luckhurst. “They want the influence that comes with the papers–that is what they are all about.”
Luckhurst said he met the Barclays only once during more than three years at the paper, but he often felt Neil’s influence.
As one example, Luckhurst points to the Scotsman’s editorial shift away from pressing for an independent parliament in Scotland.
Limited powers to govern were switched from Parliament in London to a new base in Scotland in 1999, a move aimed at handing over greater control to Scots. But under Neil’s guidance, the paper has grown critical of handing over more control, which he says has alienated readers.
“He was incessantly interfering,” said the former Scotsman editor. “Neil is so close to them it was clear he was doing their bidding for them.”
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The reach of the Barclay brothers
The business interests of twins David (above left) and Frederick Barclay are diverse. The pair own several publications, a hotel and a retailer.
PUBLICATIONS
The Scotsman/ Scotland on Sunday
Daily circulation: 72,165
Sunday circulation: 84,730
Based in Edinburgh, The Scotsman is the sixth-largest regional newspaper in the United Kingdom. Its daily circulation was down by 8 percent during the first half of 2003.
The Business
Circulation: 87,344
A national weekly publication, The Business focuses on British and international business news.
HOTEL
The Ritz Hotel, London
Built in 1906, the 133-room hotel retains the elegance of a French country house and is located near Buckingham Palace. The hotel provides banquet and catering services to the Prince of Wales.
RETAIL
Littlewoods
The brothers bought one of Liverpool’s oldest family retail businesses in 2002. The department store, catalog and Internet retailer was at one time Britain’s largest privately held company.
Source: News reports, Ritz hotel, The Newspaper Society
Chicago Tribune
