Paragraph Slam Night
Here's the text of a memo sent by the new owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Doug Manchester and John Lynch, to employees this morning. Mike Hodges will be the new president of the newspaper:
To: Union Tribune Employees
Re: MLIM
From: Papa Doug Manchester
and John T. Lynch
Date: December 6, 2011
Today is a
very significant day as we begin our ownership of one of San Diego’s most
important and historic businesses, the San Diego Union Tribune. With this
stewardship, comes a responsibility to provide a quality product and to be the
moral compass of this community.
The
motivation to acquire the U-T is twofold: first, we love our City, its history,
believe in its future and believe the Union Tribune should be owned by San
Diegans. Second, the disruption of traditional media has yielded an opportunity
to create a far reaching integrated media company, as well as a daily
newspaper, second to none in this great country.
We would
like to thank Platinum Equity and Ed Moss for their leadership in rebuilding
the Union Tribune and providing a foundation upon which we can build. They
affected much of the difficult and unpleasant work of downsizing the business
model at the U-T and positioning the Union Tribune to seize the opportunity to
create this integrated company. Ed has gracefully agreed to advise MLIM as we
investigate other media opportunities.
Working with
the MLIM leadership will be Mike Hodges, who, we are pleased to announce, has
been appointed President and COO of the Union Tribune. Mike has distinguished
himself of one of America’s innovators of digital and integrated media. Please
join us in congratulating Mike on being named to this new position and for a
job well done.
On December
9th, all employees of the Union Tribune will gather to meet and
greet at 8:30 for a hosted breakfast catered by the recently designated 5 Star
Resort, The Grand Del Mar. We will share our goals and strategies at this
gathering.
We are very
proud to be members of the Union Tribune Family and are confident that we will
together create a world class integrated Media Company and will be a committed
business leader in this great City.
Douglas F. Manchester, Chairman & Publisher
John T. Lynch, Vice
Chairman & CEO
