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Forbes pulls the plug on its plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company. The deal, which was announced last August, would have taken Forbes public through a merger with Hong Kong-based SPAC Magnum Opus Acquisition at a valuation of $630 million. As part of that deal, Forbes agreed in February to a $200 million investment from cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Since the deal was announced, Forbes says its financial performance has been solid, with Q4 2021 profits up 80 percent from the previous year. The fate of the SPAC marketplace as a whole, however, has been spotty at best. BuzzFeed’s value has declined by more than 50 percent since its December 2021 SPAC deal, and more than 35 SPAC mergers have been called off since the start of November, according to financial markets platform Dealogic.
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Creem, the magazine that was Rolling Stone’s slightly edgier cousin during its 1969 to 1989 run, is returning for an encore. The comeback is the brainchild of JJ Kramer, son of the magazine’s original publisher, Barry Kramer. Headquartered in New York (though it anticipates opening an office in its original hometown of Detroit), the new Creem will have a staff led by former Vice magazine publisher John Martin as CEO. It will include a website and newsletter (to be named “Fresh Creem”), a digital archive of the original Creem’s 224 issues, and a quarterly print edition, which will be a subscriber-only publication. “Just like Creem in its first iteration, the collection of people makes it what it is,” Kramer told the Detroit Free Press. “We have an editorial team developing today’s unique points of view and voices.”
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Gannett has split its media properties from its digital marketing business in a corporate restructuring that creates two new business units. The Gannett Media business unit, which will focus on news, content, such operations as print and distribution, business-to-business marketing solutions (including advertising) and subscription growth, will be headed by Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of news for Gannett and publisher of USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network. The other unit is Digital Marketing Solutions, which includes LOCALiQ, a provider of digital marketing services. Kris Barton, Gannett’s chief product officer, will lead that unit. Chief revenue office Kevin Gentzel and president of US publishing operations, Bernie Szachara will be leaving the company.
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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