Long Island
developer wants Newsday
Bob Toussie says he has a cure for what ails
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Mar 22, 2010
When word got out two years ago that Tribune was mulling putting Newsday on the block, the two most logical bidders seemed to be Mort Zuckerman and Rupert Murdoch, and indeed News Corp. even submitted a $580 million bid that was pulled at the last minute, allowing Cablevision to swoop in and acquire the Long Island newspaper in 2008.
Since then, however, Cablevision's Newsday strategy has seemed muddled. The cable company has been accused of meddling in newsroom affairs over coverage of the struggling New York Knicks, which it owns, and last year several senior editors were absent for days without explanation, prompting rumors of an editorial power struggle.
And a move last year to move the web site behind a pay wall has been widely seen as a failure, with only a few dozen subscribing to the premium site.
With all the turmoil, this may be the perfect time for Cablevision to unload the paper, or at least that's the thought of one New York real estate developer.
Robert "Bob" Toussie, who is one of Long Island's largest land owners, has sent a note to Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan offering to purchase the paper and Newsday.com.
The note was faxed over on March 10 -- Toussie admittedly does not use email -- but the four-paragraph proposal has yet to be acknowledged, the developer told the Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal on Friday.
Cablevision did issue a perfunctory "Newsday is not for sale" dismissal to Deal Journal.
In an interview with Deal Journal, Toussie was mum on the exact dollar figure of his offer or how he planned to change the paper.
"I’d love to tell you but I would have to pay more for the paper," Toussie teased. "Would you tell someone the cure for cancer before it was finalized?"
Should Toussie succeed in this long shot bid, he'd inherit a paper that saw circulation fall 5.4 percent on weekdays during the most recent reporting period by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, much more modest than the other newspapers in the top 25.
Newsday ranks 11th overall with a circ of 357,124.
Interestingly, no one is representing Toussie in what he calls a serious bid but seems like an extreme longshot, indeed more of a mid-March curiosity.
"You spend millions of dollars on I-banking firms and no one gets to the point," Toussie tells Deal Journal. "I am one of the best buyers in the world."
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