In the uncertain world of newspaper economics, Conrad Black learned quickly how to make money. In the coming weeks or months, Mr Black may find out to his distress what it can cost to make such a lot of money.
Not long ago, the Canadian businessman controlled one of the world's largest newspaper empires. But the empire has crumbled, he has lost millions, his senior partner is heading for jail and United States authorities have made it clear they also want him behind bars.
It began in 1969 when the young Mr Black and his business partner, David Radler, laid out C$18,000 ($119,579 at today's exchange rate) to buy the stumbling Sherbrooke Record, the only English-language newspaper in a small city in Quebec. They fired half the staff and made those who survived work twice as hard.
Critics claim the duo did not make the Record a better newspaper but they made it profitable. And eight years later they sold it for C$865,000. By then, through their company Hollinger, they were buying newspapers as fast as they could and applying their harsh recipe for success.
By 1996, it was calculated that Mr Black and Radler owned 650 daily and weekly newspapers with a combined circulation of 10 million - the third-largest newspaper chain in the world.
In the US, they owned more than 400 papers. In Canada they controlled 60 per cent of all the country's daily newspapers and were on the verge of launching a national newspaper of their own.