Tim Arango of The New York Times went to Downieville, Calif., population 300, to tell the story of Carl Butz, who saved the weekly Mountain Messenger from closing.
"Don Russell, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking editor with a blunt writing style who had owned and run the paper for nearly three decades, was retiring, and he seemed happy enough for the paper to die with his retirement," Arango reports. "And then one night Mr. Butz was watching “Citizen Kane” on cable and thought, 'I can do that.' He made the deal quickly, paying a price in the 'four figures,' he said, plus the assumption of some debts, without even looking at the books."
Butz says Russell was a reluctant seller: “His position was, it’s a losing proposition and someone who’d want it would be crazy. He called me a romantic idealist and a nut case. And that’s not a paraphrase, but a direct quote.”
"Don Russell, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking editor with a blunt writing style who had owned and run the paper for nearly three decades, was retiring, and he seemed happy enough for the paper to die with his retirement," Arango reports. "And then one night Mr. Butz was watching “Citizen Kane” on cable and thought, 'I can do that.' He made the deal quickly, paying a price in the 'four figures,' he said, plus the assumption of some debts, without even looking at the books."
Butz says Russell was a reluctant seller: “His position was, it’s a losing proposition and someone who’d want it would be crazy. He called me a romantic idealist and a nut case. And that’s not a paraphrase, but a direct quote.”
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2UEOdLB What's it like to take over a rural weekly newspaper whose seller said someone who’d want it would be crazy? - Entrepreneur Generations
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