LVRJ sold?

[Inky_Wretch]

Rumor has it Gatehouse has spun off the Las Vegas Review-Journal and sold it to a new investment group.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

No longer a rumor.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sold to News + Media Capital Group

 

[Inky_Wretch]

"Here, you buy it from us but we'll keep running it for you" is an odd arrangement.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

So who is the anonymous buyer of the LVRJ? Even the employees don't know yet.

 

[LanceyHoward]

The new buyers paid a lot of money. The website of the seller, New Media Inc. said that they sold Las Vegas for 140 million, which means they made 50 million on the flip. New Media said they got seven times EBITA. The company said they did not want to sell but with so many papers available at 3.5-4.5 times EBITA it was better to unload the LVRJ and use the money to scoop other papers.

 

[wicked]

It sounds like someone is trying to clean some money and dumping it into a real business. The guy who is a frontman for the new owners owns a pair of small dailies in Connecticut ... there's no way he has that kind of dough.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

This is all very odd. Overpaying for a paper that is in worse financial shape than when the owner bought it?

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Sounds like somebody was made an offer they couldn't refuse.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

LVRJ censoring its own stories about the mysterious ownership deal.

Las Vegas Review-Journal Removes Questions About Newspaper’s New Mystery Owner

 

[HanSenSE]

Players to be named later?

 

[Baron Scicluna]

LVRJ censoring its own stories about the mysterious ownership deal.

Las Vegas Review-Journal Removes Questions About Newspaper’s New Mystery Owner

Love the "don't worry about the names, just do your job," line.

The logical reaction should be, "we're worried about the names because how do we know they'll pay us for doing the job?"

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Stetler did a segment on it.

Las Vegas Review-Journal mystery: Who bought the paper for $140 million?

 

[JayFarrar]

Anyone who thinks this will be a mystery in few days is a fool or has no basic understanding of how the media works.

All manner of national and regional media outlets will pursue this until they get an answer.

It is just too juicy to not do something.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Depends on how many people know who the owner is, right?

 

[Football_Bat]

"Here, you buy it from us but we'll keep running it for you" is an odd arrangement.

LMAs happen all the time in the radio biz. Don't hear about them much in print media though.

 

[wicked]

With a radio LMA, you can cut costs by sharing a cluster's staff, studio space, etc.

Here, what are the savings from this arrangement? Corporate HR? Ability to buy newsprint and supplies in bulk? A cheaper AP subscription? It's much more limited.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Yeah, it seems like this deal is simply a "I/we want to own it and have no infrastructure or any on how to run a newpaper's daily operations."

 

[LongTimeListener]

Would you believe ... the Koch Brothers?

Koch Brothers deny buying Las Vegas newspaper

 

[JayFarrar]

I'd be much more inclined to believe it was some casino guy who doesn't want his name on it.

I know this isn't the pure journalism response but if you own the joint, you can do whatever the hell you want.

There's consequences, of course, you can lose prestige or business or readership or employees but if I owned a paper, and wanted something in it, then it would be in the paper, unless the editor could convince me otherwise.

 

[LongTimeListener]

I'd be much more inclined to believe it was some casino guy who doesn't want his name on it.

I know this isn't the pure journalism response but if you own the joint, you can do whatever the hell you want.

There's consequences, of course, you can lose prestige or business or readership or employees but if I owned a paper, and wanted something in it, then it would be in the paper, unless the editor could convince me otherwise.

Yeah, there is this perception that it hasn't been that way throughout the life of newspapers, but really only in the past 30-40 years has impartiality/objectivity been any sort of consideration for the editor. Citizen Kane wasn't just made up out of nowhere.