3 Heirs Reject Offer to Buy Pulitzer Firm

Three shareholders owning more than 54% of Pulitzer Publishing Co. have rejected an unsolicited $500-million takeover offer by entrepreneur A. Alfred Taubman, one of the shareholders said.

Pulitzer Publishing is the parent company of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other media properties. It is wholly owned by descendants of Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the newspaper.

Joseph Pulitzer Jr. said in a statement Monday that he and his brother, Michael E. Pulitzer, vice chairman of the board, had been joined by David E. Moore, a grandson of the founder, in an agreement under which they rejected the takeover proposal. The three own more than 54% of the company.

Taubman, a Michigan real estate developer who also owns Taubman Media Inc. and Sotheby’s, a fine-arts auction house, made the proposal last Thursday.

In addition to the Post-Dispatch, Pulitzer Publishing owns the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson; the Lerner papers, a chain of weeklies and shoppers in the northern Chicago area; television stations KETV in Omaha, KOAT in Albuquerque, N.M., WPTA in Fort Wayne, Ind., WLKY in Louisville, Ky., WGAL in Lancaster, Pa., WXII in Winston-Salem, N.C., and WYFF in Greenville, S.C., and radio stations KTAR and KKLT in Phoenix.