Maxwell Seeks to Buy Big U.S. Newspaper

British media entrepreneur Robert Maxwell said Monday that he is involved in negotiations to buy a U.S. newspaper valued “in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Maxwell declined to identify the newspaper, but his comments prompted industry speculation that it might be Gannett’s USA Today, Tribune Co.’s New York Daily News or the Chicago Sun-Times. Officials of each of those newspapers denied that they were negotiating with Maxwell.

Maxwell’s comments were made to reporters at the annual meeting in New York of Maxwell’s Berlitz International and were confirmed later by a spokesman for Maxwell Communications, the investor’s London-based holding company. The spokesman declined to elaborate on the remarks, and said Maxwell had left the United States.

The Daily News has one of the United States’ largest circulations, but in recent years it has struggled to restore profitability and maintain circulation in a market with three other dailies. The paper is conducting difficult labor contract negotiations with its unions.

Some analysts said it might make sense for Maxwell to try to purchase USA Today, since it would mesh well with his efforts to print and distribute his month-old “pan-European” English-language paper, The European, in this country. Maxwell has already been in negotiations with USA Today officials about printing the paper for U.S. distribution.

Other industry officials conjectured that Maxwell might be talking to the Chicago Sun-Times, which has seen daily circulation slide more than 100,000 papers, to about 533,000, since 1985.

Maxwell, who publishes Britain’s Daily Mirror, recently bought three U.S. supermarket tabloids, the Globe, National Examiner and the Sun, for an estimated $100 million.