Sun Valley Magazine up for sale
Boise Magazine also affected
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer
Sun
Valley Magazine is for sale, and if it cannot find a buyer soon, it may have published
its last issue.
NW Publishing Group, an Idaho corporation that owns Sun Valley Magazine
and 80 percent of Boise Magazine, has voted to dissolve, according to
plan-of-liquidation papers filed with Idaho’s secretary of state on Aug. 22.
The liquidation process is similar to bankruptcy in that all creditors are
contacted and available money is disbursed.
NW Publishing bought the two magazines from Earls Communications less than
a year ago.
The magazine in its current incarnation was formed in the early 1990s when
Earls Communications bought it from Picabo resident Michael Riedel, and merged it with Valley
Magazine.
The corporation is dissolving to enable the magazines to be sold
separately, according to Daniel (Tipp) Cullen of Ketchum, president of NW Publishing.
"We will probably see a sale very shortly of the magazines,"
Cullen said in a telephone interview on Friday.
He suggested that there are a couple of offers pending.
Attorney Blaine Clark, who filed the plan-of-liquidation papers, said that
although there is interest in Sun Valley Magazine, there is very little optimism
regarding the sale of Boise Magazine.
"Boise Magazine was losing quite a bit of money," Clark
said yesterday in a telephone conversation.
Clark said the corporation needed to be dissolved to pay its debts,
incurred primarily by Boise Magazine.
The prospective buyers, who are regional, for Sun Valley Magazine
are "non-insiders," Clark said.
"It’s not a sweetheart deal," he said. "The board and
myself are taking a very fiduciary stance on this."
Tom Wiles, Sun Valley Magazine’s circulation director, is
currently the only employee at the magazine’s Hailey office, where, he said, he is
administering the "wind down of the magazine."
The investors simply "pulled the plug," Wiles said. Unless the
magazines are purchased very soon there will be no winter/spring issue of these glossies,
he said.
Boise Magazine’s publisher and editor, Alan Minskoff, said
yesterday in a telephone conversation the fall issue was sitting at Hudson Printers in
Boise when the liquidation was announced. He said it was "ready to run, with $90,000
in revenues ready to be collected."
Minskoff said advertising sales for Boise Magazine’s holiday
issue were up this fall and subscriptions had risen.
"I was foolishly optimistic that things were improving" he said.
There were nine staffers at Boise Magazine until August when
liquidation was announced. Not one of them is in the office anymore, and several are still
looking for jobs.
"We are all owed money," Minskoff said. "We’ll simply
get in line."
All claims against NW Publishing Group must be presented within 121 days
from Aug. 30, when the dissolution notice to the creditors was issued.
"We can’t do anything [for the creditors] until the claims
period is over," Clark said.
Colleen Daly of Hailey, until recently the publisher and editor in chief
of Sun Valley Magazine, made an offer to buy the magazine on Aug. 25, Wiles said.
He said her offer was rejected.
Both Daly and Minskoff are listed as corporate officers of NW Publishing
Group. However, Daly resigned her position before her offer to buy Sun Valley Magazine.
Minskoff has owned 20 percent of the Boise Magazine since 1996,
when Sun Valley Magazine’s past owner and publisher, Michael Earls, bought the
name and subscriber base and restarted the magazine. At the time NW Publishing bought the
magazines, Minskoff was named publisher as well as editor in chief.
A call to Boise Magazine connected the caller to a recording
stating that the magazine was closed and claims should be directed to Blair Clark who
represents NW Publishing Group.
Apparently there was some interest initially shown in purchasing Boise
Magazine, but when asked to make an offer, the buyer "responded by
leaving—kind of vanished," Clark said in a phone interview yesterday.
"Alan [Minskoff] had a good little magazine, classy," Clark
said.
Claims already made against NW Publishing, according to court papers, in
order of significance: administrative expenses, which are the costs of liquidating; taxing
authorities; Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bank; Idaho’s First Security Bank; and
general unsecured claims, including subscribers and advertisers.
Clark, the group’s attorney, stressed the claims are "totally
generic…we cannot prefer one creditor over another."
Michael Earls, owner of Appellation Magazine in California’s
Napa Valley, is one of the creditors, as well.
