From editorandpublisher.com
Beginning a series of strategic changes, principals of the Aurora Media Group, new owner of The Aurora Sentinel and Buckley Guardian newspapers, announced new additions to the staff that will help shape the daily, weekly and digital news and advertising sources for Colorado’s third-largest city. read more
Archive for the 'Mergers & Acquisitions' Category
Aurora Media Group Announces New Management
Published 03/18/2011 Mergers & Acquisitions Leave a CommentWho Owns Newspaper Companies?
Published 03/08/2011 Mergers & Acquisitions , Organizational Transformation , Strategy & Leadership Leave a CommentBy Martin Langefeld for NeimanLab.org
Who owns America’s newspapers?
In January, I detailed how a hedge fund named Alden Global Capital, which played a role in the shakeup at MediaNews Group, also had significant holdings in newspaper groups Freedom Communications, Philadelphia Newspaper Holdings, Journal Register Company, Tribune, and the Canadian newspaper firm Postmedia Network — all firms with current or recent bankruptcy status.
After noticing that Alden also owned, as of December 31, 3.91 percent of Gannett’s common stock, I surveyed all of the U.S. public newspaper companies to see whether Alden pops up elsewhere as well. It turns out that, other than Alden’s stake in Read More:
Aurora Sentinel sold to Aurora Media Group
Published 02/25/2011 Mergers & Acquisitions , Uncategorized Leave a CommentAURORA | The Aurora Sentinel — daily, weekly and online news and advertising source to the state’s third-largest city — was sold to the Aurora Media Group LLC Thursday for an undisclosed amount.
The Sentinel, its publications, digital products and The Buckley Guardian came under control of new owners Feb. 24, according to officials from AMG and the now-former owners Aurora Publishing Co.
New publisher James Gold will direct operations of The Sentinel newspapers and associated media products.
“Professionally and personally, we are thrilled to be part of a community as culturally rich, innovative and thriving as Aurora,” Gold said. “The Sentinel and Buckley Guardian will continue their historical commitment to serving the community with exceptional journalism that instills a sense of place and perspective. In the months ahead we will extend our print and digital media, to engage the city’s political, business, educational, cultural and artistic communities in new and compelling ways.”
Gold is the managing partner for Leap Media Partners and was SVP/CMO of the New York Times Regional Media Group.
Editor Dave Perry will remain. Former publisher H. Harrison Cochran is retiring.
“We were pleased in 1991 to bring Aurora’s paper back to local ownership and are excited that the Aurora Media Group will continue that,” Cochran said. “Local ownership with hands-on management is increasingly rare in the era of corporate consolidation.”
The 102-year-old newspaper has covered Aurora as a weekly, a daily and as a digital media company while the city grew from a rural hamlet east of Denver to become an exurb of 325,078 people, Buckley Air Force Base and the massive Fitzsimons medical and research complex.
The newspaper has changed hands and names under a variety of private and corporate owners over the decades. Once part of the Sentinel news group under the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the paper was sold to local owners at the Aurora Publishing Co. in 1991 and remained under that banner until now.
Google Buys Metaweb To Bulk Up Search Results
Published 07/19/2010 Mergers & Acquisitions , Search Leave a CommentBy Joseph Tartikoff for PaidContent.Org
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has purchased Metaweb, a heavily-backed startup which has been compiling a grand database on more than 12 million “things,” from movies to locations, which it then provides to site owners so that they can add the information to their sites.
(A representative example, according to Metaweb: “If you were designing a page about Will Smith, a single query to Metaweb could get you rich metadata about him, an image, updates from his Facebook page, recent New York Times (NYSE: NYT) headlines about him, a gallery of his movies from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), links to his pages on Wikipedia and IMDb, and a list of related topics your users might want to explore.”)
Google says it’s buying Metaweb to improve its search results, In a blog post, it ties the deal to its recent efforts to include short answers to some fact-seeking queries directly on its Read More
News Corp. Buys Hearst’s Skiff; Invests in Steve Brill’s Journalism Online
Published 06/15/2010 Content & Design , Mergers & Acquisitions , Strategic Partnerships Leave a CommentBy Jason Fell for Folio
Media giant News Corp. has announced a pair of major investments.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher has acquired Skiff LLC, an e-reading platform for magazines and newspapers that was incubated by the Hearst Corporation. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Separately, News Corp. also has made an investment in Journalism Online, which through its Press+ service aims to restore the ability of online media companies to charge for the content. Read More
Done Deal: Hearst Buys iCrossing For $325 Million
Published 06/03/2010 Mergers & Acquisitions , Strategy & Leadership Leave a CommentBy Joseph Tartikoff for PaidContent.Org
Hearst has finally succeeded in buying search marketing specialist iCrossing, we have confirmed with a source familiar with the matter. The company is paying $325 million plus earn-outs for iCrossing, which it has been in talks to acquire for more than six months now. Hearst had initially bid $250 million for the company late last year, but the interactive ad shop rejected that offer and put itself up for sale instead. Hearst—which has been trying to move beyond its traditional businesses—had been said to be close to completing the deal in mid-April after several other suitors balked at the price.
In an interview with the WSJ, which first reported the Read More
Yahoo Buys Associated Content for $100 Million
Published 05/19/2010 Content & Design , Mergers & Acquisitions , Strategy & Leadership Leave a CommentDeal Will Shore Up Portal’s Content Offerings, Help Produce Low-Cost Media
By Edmund Lee for Advertising Age
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Yahoo has acquired startup Associated Content for slightly more than $100 million in a deal that gives the portal new technology and a new strategy for producing low-cost media.
Associated Content receives more than 16 million unique users per month, according to comScore.
The deal, which will be announced later today, is part of an effort to shore up Yahoo’s content offerings and underscores the increased use of low-cost, crowd-sourced content, a strategy that AOL is pursuing through its SEED content factory, as well as by Demand Media, which reportedly hired Goldman Sachs to explore an IPO this summer. Read More
CBS Buys ‘Green’ Media Firm EcoMedia
Published 05/14/2010 Mergers & Acquisitions , Strategy & Leadership , Uncategorized Leave a CommentBy Joseph Tartakoff for PaidContent.org
CBS (NYSE: CBS) has made a small acquisition, buying EcoMedia, an environmental media firm. The two companies had already been working together in local CBS markets; under their partnership, advertisers could allocate a portion of their CBS ad spending to a local environmental project that EcoMedia identified as needing funding. So far, EcoMedia says it has invested $1.5 million in environmental projects, including a project to install solar panels at the Long Beach Airport. CBS says all of its divisions will now work with EcoMedia “to bring advertisers a new way to engage consumers while improving the environment.” No financial terms were disclosed.
While Newspapers Cut, Google Invests another $145 Million For Nine Startups
Published 05/06/2010 Mergers & Acquisitions Leave a CommentBy Joseph Tartikoff for PaidContent.org
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has been close-lipped about how much it has been spending on its shopping spree, but the company’s just filed 10-Q shows that between January and the end of March it spent $145 million in cash to purchase nine companies. That comes out to just over $16 million… Read More
Unification Church Putting ‘Washington Times’ Up for Sale
Published 05/03/2010 Mergers & Acquisitions Leave a CommentBy The Associated Press
Executives at The Washington Times are negotiating to sell the newspaper, which was founded in 1982 and funded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Read More
