Pa. newspaper chain bids on Eagle-Times
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By Susan Smallheer Staff Writer - Published: August 31, 2009
CLAREMONT, N.H. – A Pennsylvania family-owned newspaper chain is poised to become the new owner of the Eagle-Times newspaper, with plans to rehire former employees and resume publication of the daily paper that ceased publication in early July.
According to documents in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manchester, the Sample News Group, based in Huntingdon, Pa., has submitted an offer that has the support of the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee.
A hearing on the proposed sale is slated for Wednesday in Manchester at 9 a.m.
Under the plan, Sample News Group would pay $261,000, honor all existing subscriptions to the 8,000-circulation paper, valued at about $203,000, and pay $52,000 to G.E. Capital Corp. in debts for various pieces of equipment, which would leave only $6,000 to be distributed to all the other creditors.
Former owner and publisher Harvey Hill of Charlestown would be out more than $4 million, according to the documents. Hill has agreed to waive that claim, according to court records.
Manchester lawyer Victor Dahar, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, endorsed the sale to Sample.
"The trustee has received no other offers but does know that there is one other potential purchaser who is doing his due diligency in trying to obtain bank financing," Dahar wrote the court. Dahar couldn't be reached for comment Friday.
According to court-filed documents, the paper had debts totaling $4.6 million, including $4.5 million in unsecured claims, which included money owed to Hill. The company also owes money to the Internal Revenue Service, and the states of New Hampshire and Vermont for taxes.
Additionally, court records revealed that at the time of the bankruptcy, there was a government investigation of the company's 401(k) plan, from 2004 to the present. A meeting, which was slated for July 13, was cancelled due to the bankruptcy filing, the court record stated.
The assets of the paper were valued at $871,000, which included the newspaper's telephone system, its printing press, a couple of delivery vans, its rights to its photographs, and newsprint on hand. No mention was made of any real estate.
Hill, a native of Charlestown who bought the newspaper about 10 years ago after a career in the paper manufacturing business, abruptly closed the daily newspaper and a couple of weekly publications on July 9, and filed for bankruptcy proceedings the next day. Hill said that more than a year of effort to find a new owner for Eagle Publications had been fruitless and his family could not put any more money into the business.
The bankruptcy filing effectively shuttered not just the Eagle, as it is known, but the weekly Connecticut Valley Spectator, which was based in Lebanon, N.H., and the weekly shopper, The Message for The Week, based in Chester, Vt., as well as a free classified publication, The Weekly Flea.
Since the papers ceased publication, the Claremont area has seen a lot of media attention from other newspapers, daily and weeklies, with several new weeklies, free shoppers and a Web site springing up to serve the Claremont-Springfield, Vt., region.
Creditors still have the right to file objections, which would postpone Wednesday's proposed sale. But according to the bankruptcy court, as of the close of business Friday none had been filed.
Dahar, the bankruptcy trustee, supports the proposed sale so strongly that he asked for an expedited hearing on the proposed sale and was granted permission to pursue the sale a week ago.
According to court records, Sample has put a $5,000 deposit on Eagle Publications.
Sample News Group currently owns two daily newspapers in Maine, the Biddeford Journal-Tribune and the Brunswick Times Record, which it bought at the end of 2007. Last September, it bought three small dailies in Pennsylvania and upstate New York, the Morning Times of Sayre, Pa., the Standard-Journal of Milton, Pa., and the Palladium-Times of Oswego, N.Y., according to a published report at the time.
At that time, an Associated Press account said that Sample News Group owned 10 dailies, 20 weeklies, two magazines and three commercial printing companies.
George "Scoop" Sample, the publisher of The Daily News of Huntingdon, Pa., didn't return a phone call on Friday requesting comment on the proposed purchase.
susan.smallheer @rutlandherald.com
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