Headline Sufer® /The following was written in the very last sentence of a lengthy story "College selects Tanner" in Friday's edition of the Daytona Beach News-Journal: "The board postponed a vote on a recommendation by Sharples for the college to buy the naming rights of the News-Journal Center from Halifax Media Group for $1 million."
As if Halifax Media Group headed by Michael Redding didn't benefit enough by acquiring the News-Journal in a fire sale at just under $20 million, a fraction of its true worth, he stands to gain another cool million bucks off his balance sheet by agreeing to have the newspaper's namesake removed from the $29 million cultural arts center on Beach Street.
More than 470 people lost their jobs at the News-Journal because of corporate greed. T
he News-Journal, like many print newspapers across the nation, is suffering declining advertising revenues and circulation drops while daily operating costs continue to rise in a bad economy. The layoffs started trickling in 2004, when the newspaper employed more than 800. Then-owner Tippen Davidson, who has since passed away, spent $13 million in naming rights for the Daytona Beach News-Journal Center on Beach Street, a lively arts center, which resulted in a lawsuit with the newspaper's minority shareholder, Cox Enterprises.
A federal judge ruled in favor of Cox that its minority shares, just under 50 percent, was worth $129 million, far more than the $29 million the News-Journal claimed. After appeals were exhausted, the court allowed the newspaper to be sold to Redding's group for $20 million. In the interim several hundred News-Journal employees lost their jobs and the newspaper's bureaus, including the one on Canal Street in New Smyrna Beach, were closed two years ago.
The college, led by its president, Kent Sharples, acquired the arts center from the former News-Journal owners for a fraction of the cost to build it.
The giant letters will likely come off the lively arts center if the $1 million offer goes through, but the albatross that destroyed the former mighty metro remains with the over-sized structure that was built with taxpayer money as well. And for the hundreds of loyal newspaper employees who lost their jobs and either had to take lesser-paid employment or move away, the corporate executives who now control the newspaper get richer, still.
The News-Journal newspaper is a shadow of itself to this day with many of its top reporters and editors gone. At least I continue to report the news locally, thanks to the power of the Internet.