Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Ownership in CareerBuilder, ShopLocal and Topix

From: FitzSimons, Dennis J.
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 1:13 PM
Subject: Ownership in CareerBuilder, ShopLocal and Topix

Dear Fellow Employee:

Today we announced Tribune's purchase of a greater ownership stake in CareerBuilder.com, ShopLocal.com and Topix.net. McClatchy's recent acquisition of Knight Ridder created the opportunity for us to accomplish this.

Under the agreement, McClatchy will receive approximately $155 million from both Tribune and Gannett. In return, Tribune and Gannett will each increase their ownership stakes in CareerBuilder and ShopLocal to 42.5 percent from 33 percent. Their ownership of Topix will rise to 32 percent from 25 percent.

McClatchy will have a minority interest in CareerBuilder, ShopLocal and Topix. In addition, the 20 newspapers retained by McClatchy following its acquisition of Knight Ridder will remain affiliated with the three online businesses. McClatchy's 12 existing newspapers will become new affiliates.

Further details about the transaction are in the joint press release now posted on TribLink and tribune.com.

Owning a bigger piece of CareerBuilder is especially important. The network has led the online recruitment market in job postings and traffic for two years, and during the second quarter pulled ahead of Monster.com in U.S. revenues for the first time. ShopLocal and Topix are much smaller businesses but they'll play a growing role for our newspaper dot-coms.

Sincerely,

Dennis

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