Fraud puts brakes on McClatchy bankruptcy filing?

The court is putting the brakes on dumping the McClatchy pensions onto the federal pension program because of suspected chicanery between McClatchy and Chatham Asset Management.

Chatham, its largest shareholder, plans to take over McClatchy.

In 2018 Chatham and McClatchy put their heads together and increased the McClatchy debt from $344 million to $670 million so that Chatham had to be repaid before McClatchy could meet its pension obligations.

Since McClatchy was insolvent before the extra debt, that’s fraud, the government says.

Check it out by going to

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pension-agency-questions-actions-of-mcclatchys-largest-lender-prior-to-bankruptcy-filing/ar-BB100RpP

Dayton newspaper owned by Cox again

Who knew that it was possible to resurrect a newspaper. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes the next-to-last newspaper in my 42-year journalism career will be a 7-day daily again.

And with its original owner, Cox Enterprises!

Cox agreed to buy the Dayton Daily News back from Apollo Global Management.

Give the Federal Communications Commission an assist for that miracle. The FCC ruled that Apollo could buy Cox’s TV stations ONLY if it stopped publishing a daily newspaper in the Dayton market.

Apollo gets to keep WHIO-TV in Dayton, which Cox had owned, and Cox’s Ohio radio stations. Apollo had to choose between the Dayton TV station and the Dayton Daily News.  The FCC didn’t want one owner controlling every media outlet in Dayton.

To not kill the entire deal, Apollo agreed to sell the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News-Sun and Journal-News back to Cox.

Former Ohio governor James Cox bought the Dayton Evening News in 1898 and renamed it the Dayton Daily News.  DDN was the afternoon newspaper during my 13 years there. Its sister paper was the morning Dayton Journal Herald.

Cox Enterprises is based in Atlanta.

I went from the Dayton Daily News to the Akron Beacon Journal in 1969 and retired from Ol’ Blue Walls in 1996. So 27 of my 42 years were spent in the shadow of America’s greatest newspaper owner in history, John S. Knight.

But JSK’s shadow, in a way like Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog who "predicts" whether we'll have six more weeks of winter, didn’t show up in Akron every year till after the Kentucky Derby horse race was run on the first Saturday in May. He spent his winters at the Miami Herald. Mr. Knight was wise in so many ways.

To read the Dayton Daily News article, go to https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/cox-enterprises-buys-back-ohio-newspapers-day-publication-continues/q4q4JbHSw0fMzS8dZRDF2H/?utm_source=newspaper&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=11583366&ecmp=newspaper_email&&iaccess=fDIvMTAvMjAyMCAzOjA1OjMwIFBNfGVtYWls

Newhouse’s New Orleans newspaper sold

The New Orleans Advocate, based in Baton Rouge, bought the New Orleans Times-Picayune from Advance Local Media, which is owned by the Newhouse family.

The Advocate won a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for exposés of a jury system, discriminatory to African American defendants, that allowed felony convictions even on a split 10-2 vote. Legislation repealing the practice was passed late last year.

The Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer in 2006 for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina under extremely difficult circumstances.

The Picayune began in 1836, then merged with the Times-Democrat in 1914 to become the Times-Picayune.

The paper got its name from its original cost, a picayune, a Spanish coin equivalent to 6.25 cents.

Authors William Faulkner and O. Henry once worked for the Picayune.

Click on https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2019/upstart-new-orleans-advocate-has-bought-the-rival-times-picayune/ to read the Poynter web site article.

For an article on the heartless, cruel way the layoff of everyone was delivered, go to

https://nypost.com/2019/05/07/newhouse-co-sends-bumbling-exec-to-lay-off-entire-times-picayune-staff/?fbclid=IwAR1E22yBhRbrews8VDPLkmTN5XWQQ2Sw0d90Nj6OloaqN0_nYXY2Hp-4VRA

 

Billionaire former surgeon takes over 
LA Times on Monday

Biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a South African native and former UCLA surgeon, on Monday will take control of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, which have existed for more than 135 years.

Soon-Shiong forked over $500 million for the priviledge. The deal, which was announced Feb. 7, returns The Times to local ownership after 18 years under Chicago control.

The emphasis will switch from the printed newspaper to digital coverage. Newspaper advertising revenue in America peaked in 2005 at nearly $50 billion. It’s less than $17 billion and dropping now.

Soon-Shiong also owns six California hospitals.

The 800 employees will move from Los Angeles, the paper’s home since 1935, to El Segundo by the end of July. The Times once had 1,200 journalists on its payroll. About 400 remain.

To read the full article, go to http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-patrick-soon-shiong-latimes-sold-20180616-story.html

 

L.A. Times sale for $500 million

The Los Angeles Times will be purchased by L.A.-based billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong for $500 million.

Soon-Shiong is the founder of Culver City-based NantHealth and a major shareholder in Tronc (once Tribune Publishing), which owns the Times, is also expected to purchase the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The L.A. Times demoted its top editor Lewis D’Vorkin after less than four months on the job.

The Michael Ferro-controlled Tronc owns The Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and New York Daily News.

Ross Levinsohn, the L.A. Times’ publisher since August, has been on unpaid leave after reports last month of his “frat house” behavior and previous allegations of sexual harassment.

The newsroom voted to unionize in January.

After 127 years, no Dix newspapers

Dix Communications,  whose newspapers included the Record-Courier in Ravenna, in my opinion the best smaller paper in the BJ’s 5-county area, has been sold to Pittsford, New York-based GateHouse Media for $21.2 million.

The Dix family has been in the business for a long time, and had staff members on many news-source boards and groups, which gave them an inside track of what was about to happen.

Also sold was Dix’s printing facility in Wooster and more than 30 daily and weekly newspapers, online-only publications and specialty publications. Its larger newspapers are the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier, The Daily Record in Wooster, the Ashland Times-Gazette, The Review in Alliance and The Daily Jeffersonian in Cambridge.

GateHouse Media owns The Columbus Dispatch, The Canton Repository and about 50 other Ohio publications and websites. It operates in more than 520 markets in 35 states and owns more than 125 daily newspapers and more than 300 weekly newspapers, along with other publications and websites.

Dix also owns four radio stations in Wooster and the Gainesville/Ocala area in Florida.

I am sorry to see the Dix family get out of the newspaper business. But, in these difficult times for newspapers all over America, I understand why.

Since 1890, five generations of the Dix family have handled their media holdings.

 

AND THE DIRGE CONTINUES

Repository owners buying Columbus Dispatch

The Columbus Dispatch, owned by the Wolfe family for 110 years, is being bought by New York City-based New Media Investment Group.

ThisWeek Newspapers, a collection of 24 suburban weeklies; seven magazines, including Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and Capital Style; and the Dispatch printing plant, a five-story office building on Broad Street and ThisWeek’s offices in Lewis Center are included in the deal.

The Wolfe family will continue to own and operate WBNS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Columbus; WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis; RadiOhio Inc., which operates WBNS AM & FM radio stations; and the Ohio News Network, which supplies news, weather and sports to 70 radio stations across Ohio.

The Wolfe family also will continue to own Capitol Square, a commercial real-estate enterprise, and Agricultural Lands, a portfolio of farming operations.

John F. Wolfe, chairman and publisher of The Dispatch, lamented: “The past two decades of accelerating and challenging change in the newspaper industry made it clear to us that maintaining a single-city, family-owned paper in this environment was untenable long-term.”

New Media also owns the Canton Repository, whose presses print the Beacon Journal. It is a holding company that emerged from the bankruptcy of GateHouse Media in 2013. The company controls 126 dailies among its 550 publications in 32 states.

The Columbus Citizen and the Columbus Citizen Journal both folded years ago.

Since 2007, so have the Tucson Citizen, Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Kentucky Post, Cincinnati Post, King County Journal, Union City Register-Tribune, Halifax Daily News, Albuquerque Tribune, South Idaho Press and the Honolulu Advertiser.

Newspapers that reduced the days they print, adopted online/print or print-only models include the Ann Arbor News, Capital Times, Catskill Daily Mail, Hudson Register-Star, Christian Science Monitor (one of the quality newspapers used as an example during my West Virginia University School of Journalism days), Cleveland Plain Dealer, Detroit News-Free Press, East Valley Tribune, Flint Journal, Bay City Times, Saginaw News, Harrisburg Patriot-News, Syracuse Post-Standard, New Orleans Times-Picayune (another once-great newspaper), Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, Mobile Press-Register, Portland Oregonian and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

These lists were provided by the appropriately named Newspaper Death Watch.

So today the Internet, which along with a lack of foresight by newspaper owners who could have gotten in on the ground floor of this snotty brat before he got too big to swat, caused the demise of newspapers, is the vehicle for everyone to put their opinions out there as though they are as much of an expert as Woodward and Bernstein, Scotty Reston, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Seymour Hersh (prior to his latest kerfuffle) and Maureen Dowd.

Internet readers have no way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Democracy is the poorer for it. And politicians are having a field day because the cats are dying off and there’s no one to watch the rats.

Mark Dawidziak never spoke truer words when he told me: “You got the last great retirement.”

Timely, too.

I doubt that I could have tolerated the insanity that passes for “journalism” today. Hell, a 12-year-old in his grandmother’s basement is considered as much of an expert on the news as an investigative reporter who spends six months before getting a corrupt politician or businessman tossed out on his ear or into the pokey.

Washington Post sold to Amazon founder

The Washington Post has been sold to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations. 

Jeff Bezos

Bezos will pay $250 million for the Post and affiliated publications to Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.

Bezos, and not Seattle-based Amazon.com, will be the sole owner. He will take the company private, avoiding dealing with shareholders. 

Princeton graduate Bezos, 49, was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He took the Bezos name when his mother remarried.

Post Co. chairman/chief executive Donald E. Graham and Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, his niece, broke the news to hushed and tearful employees Monday.