Lee Enterprises, Part 1
A bright young man, Alfred Wilson Lee enrolled at age 13 at the University of Iowa. Through family connections he then joined the Muscatine, Illinois, Times as a bookkeeper. Then he went the Chicago Times. In 1890 Lee moved to the Ottuma, Iowa, a three-newspaper town, and bought the Courier. Lee built circulation from 570 to 3,700 over 10 years. His business model: Be journalistically independent by not borrowing from banks or anyone with a political or economic agenda. Lee then decided to launch a newspaper chain, each controlled by family members or friends. In 1899 he acquired he Davenport, Iowa, Times, then the weakest of 10 papers in Quad Cities, which straddled the Iowa and Illinois border on the Mississippi River. In 1903 he purchased the Muscatine, Iowa, Journal. In 1907 he bought the LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Tribune and the Hannibal, Missouri, Courier-Post. Along the way the company redubbed itself the Lee Syndicate. Lee died in 1909 of heart problems at age 49.
Lee Enterprises, Part 2
Lee’s nephew, Lee Pierson Loomis, took over the company in 1909. During his tenure the company acquired more newspapers and also radio-television stations in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. In 1959 Lee bought the Montana newspapers owned by copper-mining giant Anaconda. The acquisition was almost every daily in the state. Loomis retired in 1960.A stand-alone acquisition, in 1980, was the Winona, Daily News. Mary E. Junck, who earlier was publisher of the St. Paul, Minnesota, Pioneer Press, which was not a Lee property, took over Lee’s leadership in 2001. Soon thereafter, in 2002, Lee acquired Howard Publications whose 16 dailies, including the 78,000-circuation. North County Times in Escondido, California. The price: $694 million. Lee Enterprises was a lucrative collection of small-town and mid-size city dailies that were maintaining strong local advertising revenue even while metropolitan newspapers struggled, many shutting down.
Lee Enterprises, Part 3
In 2005 still under Mary Junck’s leadership, Lee acquired the 14-newspaper Pulitzer newspaper chain, including the St. Louis, Missouri, Post-Dispatch and the Tucson, Arizona, Daily Star. The price: $1.5 billion. The acquisition made Lee the fourth largest U.S. newspaper chain. The Pulitzer acquisition was heavily leveraged and ill-timed – just ahead of a national recession and advertising and circulation declines in the newspaper industry. In 2011 the company, unable to make loan payments, filed for bankruptcy to refinance nearly $1 billion in debt of $103 million on revenue of $756 million. In 2020 Lee bought Berkshire Hathaway’s 30 dailies, including the Buffalo, New York, News; Richmond, Virginia, Times-Dispatch; and the Tulsa, Oklahoma, World.Berkshire financed Lee’s $140 million purchase price and consolidate and refinanced all of Lee’s $400 million debt at 9% interest. The acquisition became problematic a month later with the coronavirus crisis of 2020. The newspaper industry entered a tailspin when cash-strapped merchants dropped pre-print advertising amid continuing circulation losses. Even so, Junck put a positive spin on Lee’s situation, noting that Lee led the industry in digital revenue growth.