Report: Koch brothers no longer interested in Tribune papers

The conservative billionaires do not consider the LAT and other Tribune dailies to be economically viable, reports the Daily Caller and confirmed by Politico. So much for all the speculation about what would happen to the editorial standards of the Times if the Kochs bought the Tribune properties - as well as the silly protests over the prospects of such a purchase. (Last I checked political beliefs did not preclude someone from buying something from someone else.) Actually, we might never know how serious the Kochs really were in doing a deal. Sale prospects began to fade several weeks ago when Tribune said it would spinoff its newspaper assets from the rest of the company - especially its valuable TV properties. That split could take many more months to complete, and in the meantime the papers are in a kind of limbo land. One big stumbling block to a deal, the Daily Caller reported, was that the Kochs would not be inheriting the revenue stream from CareerBuilder.com and Classified Ventures, Tribune's two large digital assets. Without that money, a source said, the papers are unsustainable. Not having those properties included in the sale has been cited before as a reason that interest in the papers has flagged.