Seattle Times Completes Sale Of Maine Properties

JERRY HARKAVY

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The financially struggling Seattle Times Co. on Monday sold its Blethen Maine newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, to an investor group led by a Pennsylvania publisher.

Terms of Monday's sale were not disclosed. The Seattle Times was reported to have paid upward of $200 million in 1998 for the former Guy Gannett chain, but the price that newspapers fetch has declined sharply amid a drop in ad revenues and the migration of readers to the Internet. Guy Gannett was a family-run business with no connection to the much bigger Gannett Co.

Richard Connor, a Bangor native who is editor and publisher of the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., signed a purchase agreement in November, but the sale was put off while he scrambled to line up financing. ...