Murdoch Accepts $145-Million Offer for Chicago Sun-Times

An investor group led by Chicago Sun-Times Publisher Robert E. Page on Monday said it has agreed to buy the newspaper, the nation’s 11th-largest daily, from media magnate Rupert Murdoch for $145 million.

Page said he planned various changes in the paper immediately, including “a more serious” looking front page and the abandonment of promotional contests associated with Murdoch-owned papers. Sun-Times Editor Frank Devine also will leave the paper and will continue to work with Murdoch’s News America Corp., Page said.

“Wingo is dead in the ChicagoSun-Times,” Page told a press conference, referring to a lottery game employed at most Murdoch papers around the country to boost circulation. The Sun-Times, although dominated by the rival Chicago Tribune, is still profitable and considered one of the country’s more robust second newspapers.

Murdoch, who purchased the Sun-Times for $98 million in January, 1984, is selling the paper as a condition of his purchase, completed earlier this year, of six Metromedia television stations, including WFLD Channel 32 in Chicago. Federal Communications Commission regulations prohibit common ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same city.

Page’s group, which did not release financial details of the sale, will buy the paper through a leveraged buyout, in which the buyer borrows the money for the purchase and uses the newly acquired property as collateral. The sale is expected to become final onWednesday.

In addition to the daily paper, Page’s group will acquire the Sun-Times building and real estate located on prime property in downtown Chicago and an interest in City News Bureau, which the paper jointly owns with the Tribune. Page estimated the real estate value alone at between $50 million and $60 million, although others familiar with the property consider that number high.

Murdoch will keep the News America Syndicate, which he acquired along with the Sun-Times from Field Enterprises in 1984 and which insiders valued at about $20 million.

Leonard P. Shaykin, a managing director of Adler & Shaykin and a Chicago native, will serve as chairman of the Sun-Times. Page, who will hold the titles of president, publisher and chief executive, said the “editorial quality and policy of this paper rests with me.”

Page, who came to the Sun-Times from the Murdoch-owned Boston Herald, admitted that the newspaper had made some mistakes in the last two years.

Under Murdoch, the Sun-Times adopted a flamboyant front page, large headlines and big photographs, although Page argued Monday that the paper never fully adopted the sensational style of Murdoch’s New York Post.

Page did, however, say that the Sun-Times’ graphics were “too bold and too flamboyant” and obscured the seriousness of the paper. “We might have shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times” Page said, with “the graphic treatment on Page 1.”

Times staff writer Thomas B. Rosenstiel in Los Angeles contributed to this story.