Ron Burkle says he loves newspapers. He just doesn't always agree with them.
The billionaire Los Angeles investor has been known to sic his lawyer on publications he thought treated him unfairly. He has battled in court to keep reporters from getting his divorce records. Most famously, in late March he set up a videotaped sting in an attempt to catch New York Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern allegedly trying to extort more than $200,000 from him.
Some might look at that track record and peg Burkle as less than the print media's best friend. They also might wonder why the onetime supermarket magnate is trying to buy his way into the newspaper business by bidding on papers that Sacramento-based McClatchy Co. is trying to unload.
In a recent interview, Burkle said his confrontations with the Fourth Estate merely demonstrated his commitment to the integrity of the press.
"I didn't want to do it," Burkle said of the Stern sting. "But I think it actually speaks to the fact that we want to see good journalism.... If I wanted to be disingenuous, I would have worked out some kind of an arrangement [with Stern] and no one would have ever heard about the whole thing."
Burkle said he was ready to remain on the sidelines and let editors run any newspapers that his L.A.-based Yucaipa Cos. succeeds in buying from McClatchy, which put 12 Knight Ridder Inc. dailies up for sale after it agreed in March to acquire the San Jose-based chain.
"You put good people in and you let them manage," he said. "I don't think anyone decent in the newspaper industry will work with you if you try to meddle."
Burkle initially bid more than $2 billion for all 12 Knight Ridder papers. MediaNews Group Inc. agreed to acquire four of the papers in a $1-billion deal announced last week, but Yucaipa and its union partner, the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, said they remained "very interested" in the eight dailies still on the block.
In the hour-long interview, his most extended discussion of his potential future as a press baron, Burkle said he saw opportunity in an industry that has taken a beating in the last year. He also reiterated his oft-repeated distaste for publicity -- even as his attempted entry into the news business invited more scrutiny -- and insisted that he shouldn't have to give up his friendships with the rich and famous to make the attention go away.
