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American Media has sold the National Enquirer, along with the Globe and National Examiner, to James Cohen, the former owner of newsstand operator Hudson News, for $100 million. In addition to legal problems stemming from hush-money payments the paper admits having made to women who alleged that they’d had affairs with president Trump, the Enquirer has also seen a precipitous drop in its readership. The Alliance for Audited Media says that while the paper sold an average of 516,000 copies per issue in 2017, that number had plummeted to 218,000 by December 2018. Earlier this year, it tried to refinance $400 million in debt, according to the Washington Post. AMI still owns such titles as OK!, Star and Us Weekly.
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The Mueller Report may not be popular at the White House, but it is proving to be a big draw for readers. One version of the report, published by Skyhorse with an introduction by Alan Dershowitz, was at #1 on Amazon’s list of best-selling books and #2 on barnesandnoble.com’s list early Friday afternoon. While the print versions of the report have a publication date of April 30, ebook versions are available now. The Skyhorse version has a few competitors: Scribner’s version is touted as “the only book with exclusive analysis by the Pulitzer Prize-winning staff of The Washington Post, and the most complete and authoritative available,” while Melville House’s, which comes with no commentary, is meant to be “a non-partisan document” according to Melville publisher Dennis Johnson. For those who don’t want to shell out their hard-earned dollars, there is also a free version of the report, which can be downloaded from Barnes & Noble.
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Meredith is taking Money off the market and is also turning the 47-year-old publication into an online-only property. Money’s June/July print issue will be the last to hit newsstands. Meredith had been shopping the title with a $10 million price tag, but no one took the bait. “We are going to invest in the digital money.com brand site itself as well as leverage the Money content across our portfolio,” a Meredith spokesperson said, according to the New York Post. Money is one of the four publications that Meredith put on the auction block after its acquisition of Time Inc. last year. Fortune was sold to Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon for $150 million and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne paid $190 million for Time. Private equity firm TPG Capital was reportedly a prime contender to pick up Sports Illustrated, but the Post report says that the sale has been called off. Meredith had been hoping to rake in $500 million from the sale of all four properties.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
USA TODAY brings on Jamie Stockwell as VP of news, effective March 30. Stockwell was most recently deputy managing editor of news for the Washington Post... YouTube expands its likeness detection capabilities to a pilot group of government officials, journalists and political candidates... The AP Fund for Journalism adds 50 news organizations to its local news program, bringing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100. 
Versant Media Group, the NBCUniversal cable TV spin-off, today reported its first financial results as 2025 revenues dipped 5.3 percent to $6.7B and standalone EBITDA dropped 9.1 percent to $2.2B.
