The deals of this past weekend marked the low-point of the great media depression.
The New York Times Co, which has been searching high and low for somebody to take the Boston Globe off its hands, reached out to former business partner John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox.
The Times was able to get Henry to pay $70M for the once-mighty Globe with the Worcester Telegram & Gazette tossed in as a “sweetener.” That’s a far cry from the paper’s $1.1B acquisition of the Globe in 1993 and the $295M outlay that it paid for the Telegram in 1999.
New York Times Co. chief Mark Thompson gamely noted that the company’s happy that Henry has “strong local roots,” as if the Old Gray Lady would have turned down anyone willing to take the papers off its hands. The Times even let Henry off the hook for the pension obligations of the Globe and Telegram. To his credit, Thompson wasn’t around when the Times unveiled its New England strategy.
Former Big Three weekly Newsweek also has a new owner as all-digital IBT Media agreed to be the latest owner to try to make a go of it.
Newsweek, which was once the pride of the Washington Post Co, which has been revamping itself with off-the-wall acquisitions such as Forney Corp., a maker of parts for industrial boilers, has been passed around like a hot potato.
The Post unloaded Newsweek to stereo magnate Sidney Harman in 2010 for $1 and the assumption of $40M in liabilities. Harman then passed the magazine to media mogul Barry Diller’s IAC Internet network, merging it into the Daily Beast under the once-talked editor about Tina Brown.
The now digital-only Newsweek is down to about 20 staffers, which is hardly even a shadow of its once formidable self.
IBT, which publishes its flagship International Business Times and specialty items like Latin Times, sees value in the Newsweek brand. It might be the only one to do so.
How much lower can the media go? Things have got to be looking up.
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.
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