newspapers

One of the nation’s busiest acquirers of newspapers and online media has agreed to buy The Palm Beach Post and Palm Beach Daily News in a $49.25 million deal announced Wednesday.

Even without the Los Angeles Times, it still controls a lot of important newspapers. Will it sell them to Gannett, Murdoch, local individuals in each city — or to yet another private equity firm looking to strip papers for parts?

One day after the Chicago Tribune axed a dozen journalists, parent company Tronc disclosed raises and bonuses for CEO Justin Dearborn and CFO Terry Jimenez.

Tronc-owned Chicago Tribune staffers bid farewell to more of their colleagues as another wave of layoffs hit the newsroom Thursday. It marked the second round of layoffs in five months.

‘Sobs, gasps, expletives’ follow news of the latest Denver Post layoffs on Wednesday. The newsroom will fall below 70 positions: a startling drop from a time not much more than a decade ago when the Post and its rival, the Rocky Mountain News, together had more than 600 journalists.

Journalists at Tronc’s eight local newsrooms learned the day before Valentine’s that the company is launching big plans to get its editors and reporters pivoting to digital.

The Byrd family, owners of daily newspapers in Winchester and Harrisonburg, Virginia, has reached an agreement to sell its publications to Ogden Newspapers, a family-owned newspaper group with 43 daily newspapers […]

The Chicago Tribune unveiled plans today for a sweeping reorganization of its newsroom, aimed at becoming what publisher and editor-in-chief Bruce Dold called “more nimble, more entrepreneurial, more responsive to our readers’ current interests and permanent passions.”

The newspaper industry is working with Facebook to launch a new project to help local newspapers beef up their digital subscription efforts. But that doesn’t mean they’ve made peace. In fact, the News Media Alliance — a newspaper trade group that’s working with Facebook on the subscription project — is simultaneously launching a political action committee to help reward members of Congress for elevating their goals, including an antitrust safe harbor to better compete against Facebook and Google for audience and ad dollars.

The newspaper is working with production company Left/Right on what it describes as “an ambitious television news series that seeks to combine the range and authority of Times journalism with immersive storytelling, innovative visuals and best-in-class production values,”

Editor James Bennet promised a re-invention of the paper’s op-eds. It’s put him in the crosshairs.

Non-subscribers visiting WSJ.com now get a score, based on dozens of signals, that indicates how likely they’ll be to subscribe. The paywall tightens or loosens accordingly: “The content you see is the output of the paywall, rather than an input.”

After selling the Los Angeles Times, does the Tronc chairman really want to take on becoming the great consolidator of the American press, conquering once-mighty Gannett? Or will he exit the field — richer, but his ambitions humbled?

A team at the Ventura County Star thought they could enhance their online presence and gain new audiences with two podcasts — one on local history and the other on prep sports. Turns out they were right.

USA Today Sports Media Group, a subsidiary of Gannett Co., Mars Reel, a provider of premium coverage of the most exciting athletes and teams in high school basketball, have formed […]

The dual-revenue model of print advertising and home delivery subscriptions that historically sustained newspapers is fading. In its place, newspapers are pursuing new revenue growth through digital subscriptions. A new survey finds the weekly price of digital access for 100 U.S. newspaper sites ranges from $0.46 to $7.85. The median digital subscription price is $2.31 per week.

She leaves the top editor’s job at Gannett’s Arizona Republic to become editor-in-chief of USA Today with a print circulation (including insert sections in regional papers) of 2.9 million and websites that draw 92 million uniques a month.

The national tabloid, Aftonbladet, owned by Scandinavian media giant Schibsted, has amassed 250,000 digital subscribers (at $7-$12 a month) since launching its digital subscriptions program in 2003, a lofty figure given Sweden’s population of 10 million. Aftonbladet made 255 million Swedish krona ($32 million) in profit in 2017, driven by both advertising and subscriptions, according to its latest financials.

Tronc is getting a big premium for its flagship asset, and the Times is getting a return to private, local ownership. But a lot of questions remain about where Patrick Soon-Shiong will take his new prize.

Los Angeles Times Publisher and CEO Ross Levinsohn has been cleared of wrongdoing following an investigation into his conduct, and he will move into a new role within the paper’s parent company, chief executive of Tribune Interactive, a business unit that Tronc plans to form following the sale of the Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong.

Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has agreed to purchase the Los Angeles Times from its parent company Tronc, restoring local ownership and perhaps ending a turbulent period for the storied 136-year-old institution. Chicago-based Tronc on Wednesday announced the sale of The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Soon-Shiong’s investment firm Nant Capital for nearly $500 million in cash. In addition to the purchase price, the deal includes the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities.

The owner of the Los Angeles Times is close to a deal to sell the newspaper to Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire Los Angeles doctor, two people familiar with the negotiations said Tuesday. The $500 million deal comes amid months of turmoil at the Times, including upheaval in the editorial and management ranks. The transaction would include the Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, these people said. Soon-Shiong is a major shareholder in Tronc, the parent company of the Times.

After years of painful, protracted decline, the Los Angeles Times has recently descended into chaos: There have been three editors-in-chief in less than six months; the publisher has been put on leave for prior sexual harassment allegations; and the newly unionized staff already fears that the owner is trying to bust up their union. Mistrust is high, morale low. The ultimate fate of the paper is an open question in the newsroom.

Jim Kirk, the former publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, will take over as editor in chief. He will replace Lewis D’Vorkin, whose tenure roiled the newsroom.

After two battle-weary years in which The Guardian cut costs and halved losses, the publisher is starting to turn a corner. Today, it has a new business model and is on the brink of breaking even. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. But a shift to a unique reader revenue model that relies on voluntary contributions as opposed to restricting access has, in many ways, proved naysayers wrong.

This week, Denver Post staffers rallied around their paper’s new $11.99-per-month paywall, optimistic that the move might bring more resources to a beleaguered Post newsroom. But the paywall goes up at a rocky time for Colorado’s largest newspaper, in which layoffs, an impending move, and the sudden resignation of its publisher have left some at the paper feeling destabilized.

The newsroom employees of the Los Angeles Times have voted to form a union for the first time amid growing turmoil at the storied paper. The National Labor Relations Board counted the ballots in downtown Los Angeles; the final vote count, according to the union and supporters and observers who were in the room and tweeting during the vote, was 248-44.

Veteran Chicago journalist Jim Kirk, former publisher and editor-in-chief of the Sun-Times, was appointed interim editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News Thursday. The Daily News has been without an editor-in-chief or publisher since Arthur Browne retired from both jobs at the end of December.

Los Angeles Times’ parent company, Tronc, said Thursday that it had opened an investigation into past conduct of Times Publisher Ross Levinsohn following a detailed report by NPR. NPR’s media writer David Folkenflik reported that Levinsohn has been a defendant in two sexual harassment lawsuits and that the executive engaged in “frat-boy” behavior in work settings before joining the Times in August.

After closing its second year of profits, the 140-year-old Washington Post is poised to expand its newsroom and business operations. Digital subscriptions have tripled since 2016, and the newspaper now has more than 1 million paid digital subscribers.