The bankers are now hired. Is the early 2019 newspaper chain M&A face-off now getting serious? It’s reminiscent of an earlier brand of warfare. Newspaper chains — all cutting desperately, each facing a shortening deadline to make a “digital transition” — line up their dealmaking armies, ...
Read More
Steve Rossi, who has served as CEO of the country’s third-largest group of daily newspapers, Digital First Media Inc., stepped down on Monday, Oct. 23. Rossi retires from top post he took on 2-1/2 years ago. Then, in May 2015, he replaced high-profile “digital first” CEO John ...
Read More
Two months ago, Digital First Media’s deal to sell itself to Apollo Global Management collapsed (“Apollo withdraws from DFM deal, Paton leaves”), and its founding CEO (and would-be industry leader) John Paton said he would leave the company. Now, as of July 1, he’s gone. New CEO Steve Rossi, ...
Read More
James Dolan surprised many casual observers of the flailing newspaper trade when he suggested he might bid on the for-sale New York Daily News—and offer a dollar. But the dollar is a good proxy for the familiar question mark, as in who the hell knows what a newspaper property is worth these ...
Read More
As of today Apollo Global Management won’t meet Digital First Media’s price. That price tag of $400 million (“What are they thinking? Apollo’s acquisition of Digital First Media”) had been wavering as Apollo did its continuing due diligence over the last two months. “We have concluded we are ...
Read More
Anxious journalists from San Jose to Saint Paul, New Haven to Novato await the final shouts of the Digital First Media auction. Bidding is still in progress, as DFM’s regional business heads coast to coast make presentations to would-be buyers, anonymous to them, by conference call. They share ...
Read More
Follow Newsonomics on Twitter @kdoctor First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Today, we’ll hear official word of the demise of Project Thunderdome, one of the news industry’s highest-profile experiments in centralized, digital-first, mobile-friendly, new-news-partner ...
Read More
That's the dream that the MediaNews' new made-for-the tablet, TapIn taps into. Potentially -- and I cannot emphasize that word too much -- it may become a prototypical product for the news industry, pointing a new way out of the hollowing-out landscape into which the news industry has ...
Read More