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:

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.

In June 2006, I published “On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change.” It examined nine propositions likely to have an effect on the future of journalism, and culminated in a number of recommendations. They focused on the role of corporations, the rise of not-for-profit media, the responsibilities of journalists, the role of government and of the public, and what was called (rather lamely, it seems in retrospect) “new forms of media.”

Over the ensuing years, I have reexamined the Manifesto in light Read More

Publishers have been quick to create shiny new iPad apps that represent a ripe new advertising revenue opportunity, but the technology for serving and managing these ad campaigns has yet to catch up. Read More

The Chicago Tribune is probably not on Jobs’ acquisition list, but the following blueprint is how he might strategize its metamorphosis — and since new thinking is what newspapers need, what better choice than to think outside the Apple.

I imagine his first thought is “tablet,” and the first Read More

So much for the war on Googler entitlement. Amid heated competition for engineers, Google is trying a remarkable new perk: free use of “runners” to clean apartments, take out trash, cook dinner, run errands—whatever is needed.

Googlers are being provided with credits on TaskRabbit, an online service that brokers odd jobs in five major cities. Recent job listings on the site include “Fold Laundry and Put it Away,” “Cook dinner for 2,” “assemble four items from Ikea,” “standard wash and fold: 3 loads,” “dispose of Ikea bead,” “Pick up and deliver cake,” and “walk a dog.” The perk, presumably, only applies to Google workers who live in one of the five metropolitan regions TaskRabbit serves, including New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. Read More

There is no clear correlation between a rise in internet traffic and a fall in newspaper circulation. Some papers are growing in both formats, others are succeeding in neither, according to new research Read More

This year, Facebook will make about $1.5bn in advertising revenue. On average, this is about three dollars per registered user, a figure that is significantly higher for the 50% of the social network’s population that logs in at least once a day. How does Facebook achieve such numbers? Last week, we looked at the architecture Facebook is building as a kind of internet overlay. Now, let’s take a closer look at the money side.

If Google is a one-cent-at-a-time advertising machine, Facebook is a one-user-at-a-time engine. The social network is putting the highest possible value on two things: a) user data, b) the social graph, e.g. the connections between users.
For a European or American media, one user in, say, Turkey Read More

Earlier this week Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan wrote that Rolling Stone has little hope of capitalizing on the notoriety of Michael Hastings’ profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal to increase newsstand sales and drive more subscriptions. As Nolan writes, “[w]hereas once people would have rushed out to newsstands to pick up copies of Rolling Stone and read what all fuss was about with McChrystal, now they either A) read that one single story on RS’s website, for free, or B) read it at the competition’s website for free, which is what happened in this case.” (Rolling Stone’s inability to get its own story online in a timely fashion remains frankly mind-boggling.) Nolan argues that Rolling Stone, Esquire and Vanity Fair put out stories as Read More