How did the sale of the Portland Press Herald come about?
It was a long process. It started 14 months ago, when the Blethen family put the paper up for sale. We put a full page ad in our newspaper, looking for potential partners. We called every single rich person we could find in the state, and asked them if they’d work with us. And I think when Rich Connor heard about the sale, he was calling around, and eventually we connected. Connor told us that if we had not been aggressive in reaching out to people, he never would have come to us and talked to us. Tell us what you had to give up, what the union had to give up, in order to get this deal done. Actually, our deal looks a lot like the same deal that the Boston Globe guild rejected last week. It’s a 10 percent, two-year pay freeze, a suspension of our 401(k) contributions and a hard freezeon the pension plan. However, we get two seats on the board of directors. The other unions in the company share another seat. Also, we’ll have an ownership stake in the company, a 15-percent ownership stak
