Posted on 01/29/2020 10:18:31 AM PST by yesthatjallen
Founded in 1881, The Buffalo News will have its third owner in its nearly 140-year history, thanks to a sale to Lee Enterprises.
Spectrum News reports that the sale, for $140 million in cash, includes the Berkshire Hathaway Media Group publications with print and digital operations of 30 daily newspapers and more than 49 paid weekly publications and 32 other print products. Lee has managed the BH Media Group since the summer of 2018.
For The Buffalo News, the sale announced Wednesday morning signals the end of a 40-year ownership by Warren Buffett. Lee Enterprises will be the third owner in the newspaper’s history.
“My partner Charlie Munger and I have known and admire the Lee organization for over 40 years,” Buffett said in a statement. “They have delivered exceptional performance managing BH Media’s newspapers and continue to outpace the industry in digital market share and revenue. We had zero interest in selling the group to anyone else for one simple reason: We believe that Lee is best positioned to manage through the industry’s challenges.”
According to WBEN radio, The Buffalo News had been owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway since 1977. In the sale includes the Omaha World Herald, Buffett’s hometown paper.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...
The Dead Tree Media is falling....................
Have these publications, like most others, been liberal (progressive)in their opinions??
I hope to see the day when the nyt, wa po and time ragazine are sold for $1.00 each.
Good ole’ boys Warren and Charlie don’t do anything that’s not to their financial benefit. If they sold the media group means they know it’s failing.
Have these publications, like most others, been liberal (progressive)in their opinions??
The Lee board includes a number of Republican donors and other conservatives. The takeover is by Republicans, but don’t know if they are RINOs. But not liberal is a good thing.
Lee Enterprises. Isn’t that a company that makes fake glue-on fingernails?
Lee has become a big time publisher of several dozen papers. But it like most publishers isn’t perfect. It abandoned a significant part of its circulation territory - where the paper had previously been quite competitive - and streamlined the remaining publication down to about half its former footprint while ceasing Monday publication. Yes it’s still there and hanging on. Which is good. Just that it’s about half the paper it used to be before Lee.
It’s editorials, at least on anything relating to national or state politics, are usually vapid
They bought the digital rights, where the news is going anyways. So, all of these news outlets will have an online presence. Which Lee will have an influence, hopefully with a conservative lean.
We cancelled our subscription to the Buffalo News about 25 years ago. It was the most lefty piece of fishwrap I ever saw.
Meanwhile Bar Stool Sports just SOLD for $450 MILLION dollars.
El Presidente (Dave Portnoy) started this Blog site out of his condo in the Boston area about 20 years ago. He sold 50% of it a few years back for $25 Million. Now, that has been sold for $450 million to a online betting company.
Somebody is still buying newspapers?
That in and of itself is ‘News’.
It’s a sad, tho unstoppable process still underway.
I grew up in Orchard Park. I remember when Lenco Lumber used to have the whole back page of the sports section for their ad every Friday night.
I spoke to them about two years ago. I asked them if they still do that, they said we have not done that for years.
Thanks. Hopefully so! At least it isn’t the NYSlimes or Washed- Up Post
I wish some conservative buyers would take over newspapers around here - Norfolk Pilot, Raleigh News and Observers and the small city papers like Greenville’s Reflector, E.C. Daily Advance, etc.
Next time include HuffPo, the cancerous rag that is a boil on news media everywhere.
Pittsburgh used to be a two newspaper town with morning/evening papers. Two names, not two editions.
There were also numerous suburban papers.
An extended newspaper strike killed the evening paper and created market conditions for several suburban papers to combine and create the Tribune Review (The Scaife Paper.). The morning paper was the far weaker of the two original dailies in subscription/circulation yet it survived.
However in the past 3 years the Tribune Review ceased print operations, the Post-Gazette went to 5 days a week, then 2 days a week. Pittsburgh has no daily newspaper.
I have no idea how the revenue is for either operation but I suspect it is less than half the overall from 20 years ago.
I truly love that this has happened to them as a SITYS but also hate the fact that labor, one sided politics, slanted reporting etc. killed something I loved as a kid. Daily comics, box scores, following the standings, league leaders etc.
I know it’s all available online but that’s not the same as spreading out a paper in front of you and laying on the floor soaking in all of that after school.
It could not have been worse than the Gannett owned and run Rochester DemocRAT & Communist. (Democrat & Chronicle)
...to a Florida exotic bird outlet......
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