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The Telegraph, a UK paper founded in 1855, reaches an in-principle agreement to be acquired by RedBird Capital Partners, a US firm that has invested in companies including Skydance Media, AC Milan, Fenway Sports Group and the Yankees Entertainment & Sports (“YES”) Network. RedBird is leading a consortium that also includes British investors. RedBird will serve as sole controlling owner of Telegraph Media Group (which includes the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph). One goal of the new ownership is to grow The Telegraph’s presence in the US. RedBird will also “remove barriers to growth and accelerate the transition to digital,” according to a press release. “RedBird Capital Partners have exciting growth plans that build on our success—and will unlock our full potential across the breadth of our business,” said Telegraph Media Group CEO Anna Jones.
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News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey has slammed Google for its new “A.I. mode,” which lets users interact with its search engine as if it were an A.I. chatbot, offering them information and answers to their queries minus the links provided in traditional Google search. “Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,” Coffey said in a statement. “Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.”
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| Kimi Yoshino |
The Baltimore Banner editor-in-chief Kimi Yoshino is heading to the Washington Post, where she will start as managing editor on July 7. At the Post, Yoshino will oversee features, sports, local, investigations and data. The Banner now has the largest newsroom in Maryland. The platform won a Pulitzer Prize for local news earlier this month for a 2024 series, in partnership with the New York Times, on the opioid overdose crisis in Baltimore. “I think she’s going to bring a refreshing, creative, exciting approach to thinking about areas like features and sports,” said WaPo executive Matt Murray. “Thanks to The Banner, particularly, she understands the digitally evolving entrepreneurial state of the business.”
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.
