Black and Platinum initially offered $15 million for the Union-Tribune

The buyers of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Platinum Equity and Black Press, opened negotiations to purchase the paper at $15 million, sources tell CityBeat. While the final terms of the deal haven’t been announced, those same sources say the final cash price was “only a little more” than the original $15 million, but Copley Press will retain an equity stake in the company and also receive a share of revenues.

This last item is very good news for anyone who wants to see the paper continue on, as it suggests that the two companies do not intend to shutter San Diego’s largest daily newspaper. Platinum Equity is a firm in Beverly Hills that specializes in buying companies in financial trouble.

Black Press is run by David Black, a Vancouver-based publisher of primarily community newspapers (no relation to newspaper baron and convict Conrad Black). While the press release announcing the sale did not offer any indication of what Black’s role will be, his company is the one with the newspaper experience, so it seems likely that he’d have some influence on the editorial side of things. This 2007 Seattle Times profile offers some insight into Black’s rise and the nature of his business, and some hints of what to expect from the new Union-Tribune. A few key quotes:

Black, 60, is a Vancouver native who broke into newspapers as a business analyst at the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily. Itching to be his own boss, he bought the tiny Williams Lake (B.C.) Tribune in 1975. [Note from CityBeat: He must be around 62 now, right?]

…Black’s community papers deliver meat-and-potatoes hometown news, sports and features. If you want to know what’s going on in a suburban city hall on Vancouver Island, one veteran observer of the B.C. newspaper scene says, you read the local Black paper, not the Victoria daily.

…”They’re not bad papers, but for the most part they’re not exciting papers either,” Beers, the online editor, says of Black’s Vancouver community papers. “They’re more about making money than breaking big stories.”