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Chicago Public Media, which owns the city's NPR outlet, WBEZ, is set to acquire the Chicago Sun-Times on Jan. 31. Upon completion of the deal, the Sun-Times will join WBEZ as a not-for-profit subsidiary of Chicago Public Media. WBEZ and the Sun-Times will maintain separate newsrooms, though they are expected to share content across platforms. Sun-Times CEO Nykia Wright will remain in her position, reporting to Chicago Public Media CEO Matt Moog. The Sun-Times, whose list of past owners includes Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, was sold to an investor group for $1 in 2017. In addition to current lead investor Michael Sacks, investors in the new organization include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Pritzker Traubert Foundation. "This is an important step to grow and strengthen local journalism in Chicago," said Moog.
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Gannett is axing the Saturday print edition of its papers in 136 markets. Heralding the move as "a new Saturday experience," the company says that it will transition "from delivering the Saturday print edition to providing exclusive access to the full Saturday e-Edition." Among the papers to drop their Saturday print edition are Nashville's The Tennesseean and the Austin American-Statesman. "It's been decades since we were just a daily, print newspaper, said Daniel Sforza, executive editor of The Record in Rockaway, NJ, which will also no longer issue a Saturday print paper. "Over the past 20 years, we have added a website, mobile app, social media platforms, multimedia and more. This is another step in that evolution, as we continually respond to subscriber and advertising trends."
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Netflix's stock plunged by 22 percent the morning of Jan. 21 following a series of downgrades by financial analysts that reflect a disappointing first-quarter subscriber outlook for the company. On Jan. 20, Netflix said that it expected to add 2.5 million subscribers in Q1 2022, a considerable drop from the four million it added in the same quarter last year. In addition, the company said that it failed to meet its subscriber estimate for the fourth quarter of last year, signing up 8.3 million subscribers rather than the projected 8.5 million. "Acquisition growth has not yet re-accelerated to pre-Covid levels," Netflix said in a letter to shareholders. By contrast, HBO Max and the cable channel HBO beat their projections for 2021, hitting 73.8 million total global subscribers, beating an estimate of 73 million.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
