Orgy hotel owners come to town to ... fold the Star Tribune?

The Blackstone Group bought Hilton Hotels in 2007 for about $20 billion plus debt and Hilton Hotels Corporation is considered a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group.

This week, we have been reporting on a series of lawsuits alleging sexual harassment via an executive orgy in the posh downtown Minneapolis hotel's banquet room.

So when top representatives from Blackstone came to town, you might have expected them to restructure the downtown Minneapolis Hilton's upper management.

Instead, they are restructuring the newsroom of the Star Tribune. If by "restructuring" you mean "folding it in six weeks."

David Brauer has the scoop:

Publisher Chris Harte, who sent what I'm now calling the "six weeks to bankruptcy" memo Tuesday afternoon, wasn't at a meeting Royce and other Guild leaders shortly before the communication was released. Instead, the Guild types found representatives of the Blackstone Group -- the Strib's "restructuring consultant" -- and "a couple, three lawyers," Royce says.

You can read more about the Blackstone Group here.

This is a good summary of the company:

Co-founded by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman in 1985 with $400,000 in seed capital, Blackstone is named after its founders ("Schwarz" is black in German and "Peter" is stone in Greek). At the time of the IPO, Peterson (retiring Dec 2008) owned about 4 percent of the firm and Schwarzman 24 percent. The firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Paris, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Tokyo.