Hartz Becomes 4th Bidder for New York Post : Two Only Want Paper’s Land, Murdoch Says

NEW YORK —  The Hartz Group, which owns the weekly Village Voice, is interested in buying the New York Post, chairman Leonard Stern said Sunday.

“We want to save the Post and ensure its future,” Stern said in a statement. “With the cooperation of all interested parties, we will.”

The Australian-born Rupert Murdoch, whose News America Corp. owns the racy, politically conservative Post, must sell either the daily or a New York TV station by March 6 to comply with federal regulations against cross-ownership of media.

Stern said his company--which purchased the Voice from Murdoch in 1985 for a sum believed to top $55 million--has the money to complete the move within the time limit set by the Federal Communications Commission.

At least three other buyers have expressed interest in buying the Post, which was started by founding father Alexander Hamilton in 1801.

Seeking $45 Million

The other bidders are real estate executive Peter Kalikow, whose personal fortune is estimated at $500 million; real estate developers Arthur Cohen and Philip Pilevsky, and a group led by Wilbert Tatum, publisher and editor of the Harlem-based Amsterdam News, the nation’s oldest black newspaper.

Murdoch paid $30 million for the Post in 1976 and was believed to be asking $45 million for it. He has said he would close the newspaper if he cannot find a buyer.

The newspaper, published in a once-shabby downtown Manhattan neighborhood that is now undergoing a renaissance, has been losing $1 million a month and was $17 million in the red last year.

Murdoch said in a statement released after a deadline he set for bids had expired last Friday that “if the value of that real estate were removed, there would be no offer of significance for the newspaper alone.”

But in a later statement Murdoch said: “A number of expressions of interest” had been received for the Post. “All of them are highly conditional and include requests for unspecified further reductions in labor costs.”

Tatum, principal owner of the Amsterdam News, said his group, which he said included more than 10 investors from various ethnic backgrounds, had bid more than $31 million for the Post. “We reflect what New York is all about,” he told Reuters.

Tatum reportedly plans to oppose in federal court Murdoch’s fight for a deadline extension.

Other Bidders in Wings

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on WABC’s Eyewitness News Conference that “a lot of people want to help” the newspaper stay in business.

“There’s a good chance we can extend the deadline in order for there to be time for a buyer to come in,” Moynihan said. “If we can keep it, we ought.”

Among others mentioned in recent days as possible buyers for the Post were flamboyant real-estate developer Donald Trump and Ronald Peterson, chairman of Revlon.

A spokesman for British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, a rival of Murdoch rumored to be a major contender for the paper, said he knew nothing about a possible bid for the Post.

Murdoch faces a June 30 deadline in Boston, where he also owns both a newspaper and a TV station and has sued the FCC for an extension of both waivers.

Murdoch won temporary waivers from the FCC in 1986, but a little-noticed amendment to a federal spending bill passed last month prohibits any extension.