Koch brother confirms interest in buying newspapers

Charles Koch, chairman and CEO at Koch Industries, confirmed that his company is interested in buying newspapers, as long as they can be operated profitably.

He declined to say in the Journal report whether the company was interested in buying newspapers operated by Chicago-based Tribune Co., which have been for sale since February. It has been reported previously that Koch and his brother David Koch are interested in buying the Tribune papers, but those remarks were attributed to unnamed sources. In this latest report, Charles Koch disputed previous speculation that he would use newspapers to advance his political interests. "If we got in the media, it would need to stand on its own and have good economics, create real value and create value for the marketplace, or we wouldn't be interested," Koch said. "We wouldn't be interested in putting huge amounts of money in it on the bet that we can have a miraculous turnaround (of newspapers). We see it continuing to decline, the print media."