Liberal activists will cheer Tribune Co.'s decision announced today to spin-off its eight-paper newspaper group led by dual crown jewels Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
The move ends -- for now -- the sale of the papers to the conservative Koch Industries' Koch Bros, favorite whippings boys of the left. Charles Koch told the Wichita Eagle yesterday that the purchase of the papers was "possible," but not on the "front burner."
Tribune says the spin-off plan and focus on broadcasting will offer the best return for investors. It is paying $2.7B for 19 stations owned by Oak Hill Capital to bolster its current 23 TV properties. That move will make Tribune one of the biggest TV owners in the country.
Leftist activists have protested Tribune headquarters and the Los Angeles Times facility to protest any sale to the Koch Bros. Groups such as the Courage Campaign warned that if the energy baron Kochs took over the papers, you could kiss good-bye any coverage of global warming. Even worse, it feared warming denier crackpots would dominate LAT stories about climate change to distort science and facts.
Tribune's decision to wiggle out of the plan to sell the papers is a shrewd PR move. If the company unloaded the papers to the Kochs, it would have paid a heavy price. The future broadcast-centered company would have been haunted by the transaction. The last thing a coast-to-coast broadcaster needs is noisy demonstrations outside its properties.
Personally, I don’t think there should be a political litmus test regarding the sale of media properties. "There is a need for focus on real news, not news with an agenda or news that is really editorializing," Charles Koch told the Wall Street Journal in June. That’s sounds like good journalism.
If the LAT become a shill for anti-global warming zealots, its credibility and readership would be destroyed.
With today's announcement, Tribune Co. is off the hook. Liberals get a breather.
The Koch Bros though may get the last laugh. If shares of the publicly traded Tribune newspaper company tank, what's to prevent the Kochs from picking up the company for an amount that they would consider chump change.
Meanwhile, the Kochs are launching their latest propaganda campaign lauding economic freedom and decrying Big Government (a real laugher).
It's what free speech is all about.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
Have a comment? Send it to 
No comments have been submitted for this story yet.