From the Financial Times. Nobody quoted on the record. Ted Venetoulis, who fronts a local group that says it wants to buy the Sun, told my colleague Andrea Walker this afternoon that he hasn't talked to Tribune recently and has no indication they want to sell.

The Sun newspaper is among assets that Tribune could sell if cash is needed after its take-private deal closes, three sources familiar with the company told mergermarket. This news comes as Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin has proposed exempting Tribune from rules prohibiting the ownership of newspaper and television stations in the same market for the next two years.

Two of the sources stressed that this could be the case only if Illinois-based Tribune feels pressure from the approximately USD 13bn in debt which it will have as a result of its planned USD 8.2bn take-private deal. One of the sources said a sale of The Sun, a daily newspaper in the Baltimore, Maryland area, is “highly likely” in the year following the closing of the deal, under which Tribune employees have ownership but Sam Zell has control.

Among Tribune’s holdings, The Sun is likely the largest paper the Tribune Company would look to sell, the sources said, as other metropolitan dailies such as New York-based Newsday, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times are likely to continue to be held by the company.

The Sun has seen declining revenues and faces competition stemming from last year’s arrival of the Baltimore Examiner, a free daily newspaper in its market, the sources said. Tribune has started its own free dailies in Chicago and elsewhere, but not in Baltimore, where The Examiner circulates more copies than the Sun. One source speculated the paper could be sold to an individual or group looking “to reach into [Washington] DC,” and named area billionaire Daniel Snyder as someone who could seek to buy it.

Baltimore Media Group, headed by Theodore Venetoulis, has previously expressed interest in purchasing the Sun. Earlier this year, an analyst said The Sun could garner a purchase price of up to USD 517m. A second analyst now estimates The Sun’s worth to range from USD 100m to USD 300m.

One of the sources familiar with the situation said a purchase price would likely be between the highest of the second analyst’s estimate and the top of the Lehman Brothers estimate. The second analyst said it may be tough for a buyer purchasing The Sun to break into the Washington Post’s market, which has been dominated by the latter paper for decades. However, the analyst noted, the two newspapers “battle… in a handful of Maryland counties immediately north of DC.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they [Tribune] sold it,” the analyst said of the possible divestitures of The Sun. For buyers, the analyst said, The Sun and Baltimore are attractive because the city has recently seen an increase of development and a growing affluent community. For the Tribune, selling such a large asset would be beneficial because it would not cut from the company’s three flagship papers, the analyst said. The sale of The Sun would generate a large amount of funds with which to pay down debt. The analyst said that because the paper is not one of Tribune’s three largest, it could be considered “non-core” by the organization.

The first two of the sources familiar with the situation said that The Sun would be sold before newspapers in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, which they said are key markets for the NYSE-listed Tribune. Last month, Tribune sold other newspapers outside those three areas - two southern-Connecticut based newspapers.

Tribune plans to close its take-private deal by year’s end. The deal must close by 15 May 2008 or the company will risk termination of the deal, according to regulatory filings.