Union-Tribune Sale: Is San Diego Really Just a Big Small Town?

My best guess: The Union-Tribune will get smaller and much more local-local focused. And that real estate under its building (and the Union-Tribune's other San Diego real estate holdings, which we assume are part of the deal), that may be a real motivator for the purchase. Commercial real ...

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Tribune Sale May Be a Tipping Point for US News Industry

INSIGHTS WILL BE BACK ON 2 JANUARY 2008. A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR READERS Important Details: Back in the spring, the Tribune Company, responding to shareholder pressure, acceded to a complex, $8.2 billion going-private process. Buyout artist Sam Zell, who’s ...

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Tribune Sale Concludes in $8 Billion Deal

Important Details: Another outsider has bought into the US newspaper industry. In this case, investor Sam Zell becomes both the newest and most significant new face in an industry undergoing rapid ownership change. Zell and The Tribune Company agreed to his purchase of the company in the wee ...

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Tribune Puts Up a “For-Sale” Sign

Important Details: In one statistic, you can feel the pain of the Tribune Company and the newspaper industry overall. Back in 2000, when times seemed optimistic, the Tribune swallowed Times Mirror, vaulting itself into becoming a national newspaper company. It paid $8 billion (including debt ...

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Newsonomics: By Selling To America’s Worst Newspaper Owners, Michael Ferro Ushers The Vultures Into Tribune

Is it the apocalypse, or just an unreasonable facsimile? In a week of newspaper industry drama — GateHouse’s expected takeover of Gannett and McClatchy’s unexpected move in the direction of bankruptcy — who could write a better next act than that old newspaper vaudeville duo of Michael ...

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Newsonomics: Inside Tronc’s Sale of the L.A. Times (And All The New Questions To Come

Patrick Soon-Shiong has finally won his hometown prize. After a number of years of trying to buy his local paper, Los Angeles’ richest billionaire has seized an unpredictable opportunity. In a move that’s shocking but not really surprising, 65-year-old Soon-Shiong will pay a chunk of ...

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Tronc Turmoil: Beyond the Public Quiet, Pressure Builds in Delaware Courts, Gannett HQ and Tribune Tower Itself

After noisily consuming much of the news industry oxygen during the first half of 2016, the quiet currently emanating from tronc HQ seems almost unsettling. There have been no tronc announcements since the big news of Tribune Publishing re-naming on June 20. Gannett hasn’t made a peep since ...

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Newsonomics: Can Michael Ferro’s ‘I Am Tribune’ Routine Hold Up In Court?

As Gannett’s strategy to make a quick kill of Tribune Publishing goes south, could a lawsuit save it?   Large Tribune investors have all but threatened to file suit. They’ve charged that Tribune chairman Michael Ferro isn’t representing the interests of all shareholders, as a leader of a ...

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Newsonomics: Readers’ Guide Tribune gets Troncked: A Reader’s Guide to the Tribune/Gannett War

        In a move that, even amid all the nastiness of the Tribune/Gannett war, we would still have to consider stunning, Tribune Publishing has renamed itself — to tronc. In a memo to Tribune staff this afternoon, CEO Justin Dearborn wrote: Today, I am pleased to announce ...

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Tribune’s Michael Ferro: Sell to Gannett? We’ll Buy Gannett!

Tribune Publishing chairman Michael Ferro hasn’t said much in public since Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the U.S., went public with its hostile takeover bid for his company. But inside the company, publisher of a slate of struggling but nationally recognized broadsheets like The ...

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