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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Newsonomics: How Gannett’s Bid for Tribune Went South

Gannett’s hopes for a quick acquisition of Tribune Publishing, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and a half dozen other regional newspapers, are looking increasingly problematic. Tomorrow at the Los Angeles office of law firm Sidley Austin, Tribune will hold its ...

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Newsonomics: Mitra Kalita Leaves L.A. Times for CNN

The Los Angeles Times has just lost an important digital leader, as S. Mitra Kalita — just named as one of the ten most poachable players in media — leaves her job as managing editor for digital strategy of the paper to become vice president of digital programming at CNN, starting later this ...

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Newsonomics: Denverite Launches as First of Would-Be Nationwide Digital-Only Local News Chain

Today, the news landscape in Denver gets just a little more crowded with today’s announcement of the launch of Denverite, about a month away. Denverite is part of a larger, if still tiny, local news reinvestment trend, but it is its lineage — both in funding and in thinking — that compels our ...

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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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Tribune’s Anti-Gannett Strategy: Tronc, The Lagos Gambit and Stalling

Now, in the likely last chapters of the Tribune saga, parody precedes event. As Justin Dearborn – sans his boss, Tribune board chairman Michael Ferro – outlined the company’s new “billion-dollar” thinking Wednesday, a column in LA’s Downtowner proceeded to steal his strategic thunder. Entitled ...

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Newsonomics: NYT’s 1Q, Reader Revenue is now 57% of All Times Revenue

If there were any doubt about the importance of reader revenue to the future of The New York Times – and most of the news publishing business – consider these numbers, offered up in the company’s first-quarter, 2016 financial report this morning. The New York Times now depends on readers for ...

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Newsonomics: In the Platform Wars, How Well Are You Armed?

Feel like you are in a social stupor? Facebook getting you down? Have that vague feeling that your website and your mobile apps just aren’t getting the job done. Perhaps, an old Polish proverb applies: When someone tells you that you’re drunk, she might be wrong. When three different people ...

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Michael Ferro Uninterruptus: Can Gannett Pry The Talkative Tribune Head From His New Chair?

Meet Michael Ferro. Ferro, 49, is not yet three months in to his stint as chairman of Tribune Publishing, the newspaper company that owns and operates such august titles as The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, and he is already fending off efforts from powerful ...

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Yahoo: Who’s Ready To Take On A Legacy Digital-Native Media Turnaround?

Which picture would you like to see on the wall of digital media history alongside that all-time classic, Time Warner’s Jerry Levin half-smile as he brought new partner, AOL chief Steve Case, into the fold as the companies completed their $160 billion merger in 2000?       As ...

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