Louisville Newspapers to Be Sold in Family Feud

An explosive family dispute blew apart one of the nation’s last family-owned media empires Thursday as the Bingham family of Louisville suddenly offered to sell a newspaper and broadcasting conglomerate that has dominated Kentucky life for half a century.

The businesses--including the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times newspapers, a Louisville television outlet, two radio stations and a rotogravure printing company--have been valued by investment firms at between $255 million and $385 million.

The impending sale was announced early Thursday in a statement by 79-year-old Barry Bingham Sr., who controls about 95% of the companies’ voting stock. Bingham cited “divergent interests” among the third and fourth generations of the family who own or stand to inherit stock.

Almost simultaneously, his 52-year-old son, Barry Bingham Jr., denounced the sale as “irrational and ill-advised” and publicly resigned as editor and publisher of the newspapers and vice chairman of the broadcasting and printing firms.

He said that his father’s decision to sell the companies “clearly indicates that he holds other family members’ personal interests and priorities at a higher value than my service to the companies. It is difficult not to view this action as a betrayal of the traditions and principles which I have sought to perpetuate.”

The younger Bingham said later in an interview that he is reconsidering his resignations at his father’s request, but he added that he would not remain with the businesses if they were sold. He said it is “unlikely” that he will remain in Louisville.

Barry Bingham Sr. pledged to sell the companies only “to owners who can be counted on to operate them to high levels of journalistic and civic responsibility.” Likely bidders, Louisville sources said, include the Washington Post Co.; Times Mirror Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times; the New York Times Co., Knight-Ridder Newspapers Inc. and Gannett Co., the country’s largest media chain. A Times Mirror spokesman said Thursday that the company does not comment on its acquisition plans.

The Louisville case would be only the latest in which a family rift has forced a newspaper sale. Many family-owned papers have had difficulty holding their trusts together as the number of heirs has grown. In the last 18 months, similar feuds have forced the sale of the Des Moines Register and the Detroit News, both to Gannett.

The sale announcement astounded most of the 2,500 Bingham company workers and much of Kentucky, where the Courier-Journal and Times held court for decades as the most liberal--and, usually, the most reviled--powers in the deeply conservative state.

The papers have won eight Pulitzer Prizes since 1917, seven under the stewardship of three generations of Binghams. In the process, the papers became perhaps Kentucky’s foremost political force. The newspapers’ circulation, now 300,000 weekdays and 322,000 on Sunday, peaked as the 1974 recession struck, and the resulting flight of industry from blue-collar Louisville sapped readers and money.

The decision to sell the companies appears rooted in a family dispute that surfaced publicly in 1984, when the younger Bingham asked several female family members to resign as directors of the firms and proposed bringing in outside management experts.

His sister, Sallie Bingham, refused to resign and was ousted. She later offered her stock, worth about 14% of the companies’ value, for sale and is reported to have rejected a $26-million offer from her relatives.

The stock battle, which has lasted more than a year, was said to have prompted the elder Bingham to decide that the companies’ future lay with outside owners. The younger Bingham protested but said Thursday that the sale is irrevocable.

In a statement, the younger Bingham said: “Had I thought, in the early 1960s, that my career would be abbreviated by my parents in this summary way, I would have dedicated my life’s work to other enterprises.”

Paul Janensch, the newspapers’ executive editor, said: “People are stunned. Shocked. And concerned about their futures. But they’re also doing their work, and . . . the Times got a story into the make-over edition that led Page One.”

Final sale of the companies will require “anywhere between six months and a year,” the younger Bingham said Thursday. Sale of the broadcast outlets, which must be spun off to a separate buyer under federal rules, will require approval of the Federal Communications Commission.