Potential buyers of the Tucson Citizen were invited last week by Gannett Co. Inc. to visit the paper and interview employees, but apparently no one accepted the invitation.
Gannett sent two company representatives to the Citizen March 25, announcing that negotiations with “interested parties” were ongoing and that the parties had been invited to Tucson. One representative left over the weekend and the other left Thursday morning.
Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell declined to speculate on why the interested parties did not come.
“Again, the invitation is what it is. You are likely to know more and sooner than I what is happening with that, if anything,” Connell wrote in an e-mail. “Of course we will tell employees the status of the paper once it’s determined. We aren’t commenting on the negotiations.”
Gannett announced Jan. 16 it was selling the Citizen, and would close the paper March 21 if a buyer could not be found.
The paper has about 65 fulltime employees.