*My Korean friend Jaehoon Park, from the Horizon Group, paid a visit when he was in Washington last week. He says Horizon is looking for media properties in America, but they’re thinking mainly about electronic, not print. I can continue the conversation, but I don’t think it will lead anywhere. Anyway, I don’t trust Horizon Group. They’ll only invest if they think they can take advantage of our weakness.

*I talked with our old college classmate Shigehiko Watanabe and several other Japanese who know and respect our journalism. They would like to help us out. But Watanabe cautions that most of the potential Japanese investors have been burned on U.S. equity deals. That means they won’t invest without the certainty of a good return, or the prospect that they’ll eventually get control of the company. Since we can’t promise either, this route probably won’t take us anywhere.

*I called Chris Ricks at Cloward’s in London, to see if any British or Dutch media companies might be interested in an investment in the $500 million range. He said he would check, but he’d already been contacted by our investment bankers in New York and had told them it was a nonstarter. Quality newspapers are cratering in the U.K., and they assume the same thing is going to happen to us. So they’re out.

*There are other prospects in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. Some of them wouldn’t be suitable. But if you’re running out of options, let me know.

I appreciate the terrible pressure you’re under right now to save the paper. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

As ever,

Arthur

Another file was slugged ABEL.DOC. It was a brief letter Arthur had sent to the wife of Senator James Abelard. The letter was dated a week after my visit to see Abelard at the Capitol, which had prompted his sudden withdrawal from the presidential campaign.

Dear Joan:

I know this is a bitter time for you and Jim, and I don’t blame you for hating the newspaper business in general and the Mirror in particular. But what happened may have been for the best. Nobody’s secrets ever survive a presidential campaign. The fact of Jim’s hospitalization would have come out eventually, perhaps in a way that would have been far more damaging to Jim. I wish we lived in a world where a politician could still have a private life, but we don’t.