daily newspapers

After furloughing hundreds of Lee Enterprise employees during the coronavirus economic downturn last quarter, the media company was able to pay billionaire Warren Buffet's finance company $36.7 million under the debt refinancing deal agreed to earlier this year.

Lee – owner of the Quad City Times and Dispatch/Argus and 75 other daily newspapers and online news sites – owes Buffet's BH Finance LLC more than $539 million, which carries an annual interest rate of 9 percent.