The Wall Street Journal is reporting Lee Enterprises (owner of the Quad City Times) is asking its lenders to exchange senior debt for debt with higher interest rates and later maturity.
The plan, according to the Journal, would give Lee more time to refinance its more than $1 billion in debt which comes due in April 2012.
Under the exchange, creditors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Monarch Alternative Capital, could end up owning about 13 percent of Lee, according to the Journal.
The most recent plan to rework Lee's debt comes a week after the newspaper chain reported a quarterly loss of $156 million, largely because of the company's falling market value.
The loss of $3.46 per share for the quarter ending June 26 compares to a 26 cents per share profit a year ago. Excluding the non-cash adjustment, Lee reported it would have earned 21 cents for the quarter.
Lee, which operates 40 daily newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Arizona Daily Star, took on most of its current debt when it acquired the St. Louis paper in 2005.
