Chatham names former Tribune executive as new CEO, says it will keep McClatchy name

Chatham Asset Management, the hedge fund that won McClatchy Co. at auction, announced Friday that media industry veteran Tony W. Hunter will be the company’s new chief executive.

Hunter, 59, worked at Tribune Co. for 22 years, rising from circulation manager to CEO of Tribune Publishing and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. He left the organization amid restructuring in December 2016.

He has his own advisory and public speaking firm, TWH Enterprises, and since January 2019 has been chairman of Revolution Enterprises, a multi-state cannabis company based out of Illinois. He lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

“Tony is an energetic, adaptive innovator with unparalleled expertise in the publishing industry. At this critical time for journalism, we are confident that his proven track record of implementing positive change and enhancing digital capabilities will serve McClatchy well,” Chatham said in a statement. “We look forward to furthering McClatchy’s legacy of informing readers and providing meaningful value to the clients and communities its publications serve.”

The company also announced Friday that it will retain the McClatchy family name once the ownership transition is complete.

Chatham did not disclose Hunter’s compensation or other terms.

Hunter succeeds Craig Forman, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and tech entrepreneur who has led McClatchy since 2017. Forman will return to Silicon Valley once the sale of McClatchy is complete. The transaction is expected to close next month.

Under the terms of Chatham’s purchase agreement, the rest of McClatchy’s senior leadership team and all of its employees will stay with the new company. Board chairman Kevin McClatchy, a descendant of the company’s founder, will also step down, and Chatham will name a new board.

“McClatchy has a well-earned reputation for independent journalism in the public interest, and I am humbled to lead this institution alongside Chatham, a longtime supporter of McClatchy and the publishing industry,” Hunter said in the statement announcing his hiring. “Craig and his team have had impressive success in transitioning to a digital business model, which we intend to accelerate.

“While honoring its past and continuing its commitment to essential local reporting, we will chart a new, sustainable path for McClatchy focused on customers, operational excellence, and organizational agility.”

The challenge of leading McClatchy as it emerges from bankruptcy should feel familiar to Hunter, who helped lead Tribune out of a similar situation into profitability. After 15 years at the Chicago Tribune, he rose to executive leadership posts amid the 2008-2009 recession and financial crisis that both battered the newspaper industry and accelerated its shift to digital platforms.

“I believe the role of a leader during disruptive times is to create a pathway and a reason for change, and so I would call it transforming the organization,” Hunter said in an interview posted in August 2018 by Trend Hunter, an online magazine focused on innovation.

Chatham’s announcement touted that transformation, citing Hunter’s “reinvention of Tribune’s business model in a rapidly evolving business environment, investing in local differentiated content, new digital products and services, and brokering innovative strategic partnerships and initiatives.”

Hunter described his accomplishments similarly in the Trend Hunter video.

“We had to go from being a newspaper company to a media and business services company that happens to publish a newspaper,” he said.

When McClatchy filed for bankruptcy in mid-February, the company said it had twice tried to merge with another news organization but was unable to obtain financing because of its massive pension obligations.

It was later confirmed that the dance partner was Tribune.

At McClatchy, Hunter takes over an organization that is leaner and well along the path of digital transformation. Legacy pensions and debts largely associated with the 2006 acquisition of the Knight Ridder chain will no longer be issues coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

McClatchy’s advertising revenue fell by 80 percent between 2006 and 2018, according to the company’s bankruptcy filing. Daily print circulation fell by 58.6 percent in that period.

The company has worked under Forman and his team to reach a more sustainable 50-50 split of print vs. digital advertising and also relies more on audience revenue than when Forman arrived.

Still, the business climate remains challenging.

One industry analyst calculated that McClatchy lost as much of 40% of its advertising revenue after the pandemic shocked the U.S. economy.

Hunter has said that the jump from media to cannabis was less random than it appeared.

“I came from one of the biggest mission based industries there is,” he told Cheddar, a financial news network, last summer. “And lo and behold, I found another one that’s really focused on social and economic and doing well for consumers.”