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Category: Media
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Another mogul mulls Newsday bid
A fourth suitor may join the bidding war over Newsday, the suburban tabloid put on the auction block by the financially-beleaguered Tribune Company.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Jared Kushner, boy publisher of the New York Observer, and son of New Jersey real-estate mogul Charles Kushner, is inquiring about the Long Island-based newspaper, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.
Among New York media moguls, the 27-year-old may be considered an upstart, but he has deep pockets. In July, 2006, he spent $10 million to buy the money-losing Observer while still getting his MBA at New York University, telling the New York Times that the opportunity to buy a newspaper doesn’t come along very often.
Kushner joins a field of giants who are eyeing the still-profitable tabloid, including billionaire magnate Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the New York Post, real-estate developer Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News and James Dolan, whose family owns Cablevision.
The magic number sought for Newsday is upwards of $500 million, as Tribune Chairman Sam Zell struggles to stay afloat after his highly leveraged purchase of the company last year. Besides Newsday, Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other newspapers, as well as local television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Kushner, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, is the scion of a real-estate, banking and insurance empire valued at more than $1 billion built by his father Charles. But the elder Kushner suffered a spectacular fall from grace several years ago. He spent nearly a year in jail after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, admitting, among other things, to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister to retaliate for her cooperation with federal investigators.
Jared Kushner is the only one of his parents’ four children to work at the family company, where he is a principal.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Will the Tribune Company sell Newsday? – March 20, 2008
- Zell takes over Tribune – December 21, 2007
- Newspaper lobbyists may lose a moneymaker – October 20, 2007
- Bill Gates enjoyed biggest payday of 2007 – March 7, 2008
- Bruce Sherman and Hearst-Argyle – August 27, 2007
- Sulzberger dodges bullet – for now – March 18, 2008
- Murdoch’s media machine – June 25, 2007
- Burkle still chasing a newspaper dream – July 9, 2007
- Yucaipa may pay Bill Clinton $20M – January 24, 2008
- Mays family awaits Clear Channel buyout – February 12, 2008
Read related stories: Business · Media
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Will the Tribune Company sell Newsday?
Tribune Company owner Sam Zell may be entertaining bids for Newsday, the company’s Long Island paper, amid mounting financial pressures.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive mapMAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Citing an unnamed newspaper industry insider, Crain’s New York Business reported today that News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch “is believed to have set his sights on Newsday.” Murdoch was reportedly interested in a joint operating agreement between Newsday and his New York Post last year. But the idea went nowhere when Sam Zell took Tribune private in a deal worth $8.2 billion.
Others expressing interest in buying the tabloid are said to include Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real-estate developer and publisher who owns the New York Daily News, and James Dolan, whose family controls Cablevision, the cable television operator, the New York Times reported.
Talk of the possible sale of Newsday surfaced today as Tribune reported a fourth-quarter loss of $79 million. The company acknowledged it may have to sell assets as it struggles past a highly-leveraged December deal that took the company private.
The dismal results come three months after chairman and CEO Zell, a real estate mogul with no experience in the newspaper business, led a buyout of the struggling company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other newspapers, local television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
At the time, Zell said he planned to sell the Cubs and related assets, but wanted to keep most of the rest of the company intact. He also said that additional downsizing was not the answer to historic changes in the newspaper industry. But in the three months since, he has cut jobs, citing falling advertising revenue and a tanking economy.
Tribune said today it has “begun a strategic review of certain Tribune assets to determine whether capital can be more effectively redeployed into our core operations or toward reducing our outstanding leverage.”
Related Stories on Muckety- Zell takes over Tribune – December 21, 2007
- Newspaper lobbyists may lose a moneymaker – October 20, 2007
- Murdoch’s media machine – June 25, 2007
- Forget news, is McClatchy a real estate play? – January 5, 2008
- Bruce Sherman and Hearst-Argyle – August 27, 2007
- Mays family awaits Clear Channel buyout – February 12, 2008
- Candidates and baseball owners cover political bases – October 10, 2007
- Patriots’ Kraft wants English club – October 30, 2007
- Surprise! Gore supports Murdoch – July 18, 2007
- Murdoch gets taste of his own medicine – September 8, 2007
This post is tagged with: Baltimore Sun, Business, Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, K. Rupert Murdoch, Los Angeles Times, Media, News Corp., Newsday, Newspapers, Sam Zell, Tribune Company
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Sulzberger dodges bullet – for now
Sidestepping a potentially nasty proxy fight, the New York Times Company announced yesterday that it would give two seats on its board to a pair of hedge funds seeking to increase investor profits.
Harbinger Capital Partners and Firebrand Partners have spent more than $500 million since December to buy a 19-percent stake in the family-controlled company, becoming the Times’ largest public shareholder. The funds had originally proposed four nominees to the board, saying they wanted to push the Times to unload holdings outside of its core business, such as a stake in the Boston Red Sox, and to invest more aggressively in its Internet operations.
Offering an unexpected compromise, Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. agreed yesterday to expand the board from 13 to 15, and to seat two of the hedge funds’ nominees – Firebrand founder Scott Galloway and James Kohlberg, chairman of private equity company Kohlberg & Co. In exchange, the funds agreed to end to their proxy fight.
Story continues below interactive mapMAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The agreement marks the first time since the Times Company was taken public in 1967 that it has accepted directors nominated by outsiders, according to Times Company executives
What, if anything, seating dissident investors means for the Times remained unclear. A two-class stock structure gives the Sulzberger family control of a majority of the board, and the Harbinger-Firebrand group has said that it has no plan to challenge that control.
Galloway, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who owns a Long Island estate complete with outdoor showers and a volleyball court with bleachers, made his fortune in the late 1990s by founding and flipping gift-site RedEnvelope.
A profile in Conde Nast Portfolio, entitled “Boardroom Braveheart,” described how he teams up with capital investors such as Harbinger, who ”provide the financial muscle, while he does the tire-kicking, letter-writing, and shareholder-swaying.” Galloway reportedly gets about 10 percent of the profits from the deal, in addition to the board seat if it’s successful, but assumes little financial risk.
The profile also quoted a graduate student in his class at NYU. describing his brash style. “He’s a jackass,” the student said. ”He’s not afraid to call you out if he thinks you don’t know what you’re talking about. But it works.”
Like most newspaper companies, the Times has been socked by circulation declines and the migration of advertising to the Internet. The company’s assets include About.com, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, a string of smaller newspapers, majority ownership of a new high-rise headquarters building in Manhattan, and the minority stake in the Boston Red Sox.
The Times has fended off activist investors in the past, including an attempt last year by Morgan Stanley Investment Management to eliminate the dual-tiered share structure, but they owned a smaller percentage of shares.
Related Stories on Muckety- Money men at the media summit – July 12, 2007
- Bruce Sherman and Hearst-Argyle – August 27, 2007
- Surprise! Gore supports Murdoch – July 18, 2007
- Zell takes over Tribune – December 21, 2007
- Giuliani likes roar of Nascar engines – November 19, 2007
- Scott Boras: The Ari Gold of baseball – November 5, 2007
- George Mitchell: connected or conflicted? – December 15, 2007
- Newspaper lobbyists may lose a moneymaker – October 20, 2007
- Plum TV courts the elite – September 7, 2007
- Will Murdoch buy Newsday from Tribune Company? – March 20, 2008
This post is tagged with: about.com, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Boston Red Sox, Firebrand Partners, Harbinger Capital Partners, International Herald Tribune, James A. Kohlberg, Media, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, New York Times Co., Newspapers, Scott Galloway
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Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo!
Such a deal has long been speculated about because of Yahoo’s sagging prospects. This morning Microsoft made it a reality by offering $44.6 billion ($31 a share) for Yahoo! That’s more than a 60 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing price Thursday.
Henry Blodgett over at Silicon Alley Insider calls it a “brilliant” move by Microsoft. (Story continues below interactive map.)
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The two companies currently share a strong direct link. Maggie Wilderotter, a member of the Yahoo! board of directors, is a former senior vice president at Microsoft.
She is chairman and CEO of Citizens Communications and a director for Xerox and Tribune Co.
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Great, just in time to make my skeletal muckety social network map of the Big Eight media corporations interlinking directorships outdated. http://wecanchangetheworld.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/the-8-mega-media-corporations-sony-added-in-as-a-bonus-makes-9-skeletally-mapped-on-muckety/
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Gore & Hyatt taking media company public
The media company co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt five years ago plans to go public.
Current Media, which operates a TV network and a web site aimed at young audiences, notified the SEC of its intentions today.
The company launched Current TV in 2005. The TV network now has about 51 million subscriber households, according to SEC documents. (Story continues below interactive map.)
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.
Current Media also unveiled a website, Current.com, in October 2007. Combined revenues in 2007 were $63.8 million, with losses of $6.1 million. Gore, Hyatt and programming president David Neuman each received salary and bonuses of about $1 million in 2007.Current Media aims to fill what it describes as a programming gap for young adults. “Young adults need and want news and information about what is going on in their world; however, they have not had a news and information source on TV that speaks to them,” the company said.
The SEC documents underscored Gore’s importance in the venture, particularly in relationships with key distributors. However, the company said, “Mr. Gore has a number of other commitments that limit the amount of time he can devote to our business.”
Gore’s many commitments include being a director of Apple, a partner at Kleiner Perkins and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which invests in green companies. While his time is limited, his connections have obviously paid off. Gore is also an adviser to Google, which supplies content to Current Media.
Yet he isn’t the only high-profile personality in the company. Co-founder Joel Hyatt founded Hyatt Legal Services and recently became a director of Hewlett-Packard.
Billionaire Ron Burkle, a close friend of Bill Clinton, is a director of Current Media, as is investment banker Richard C. Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
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Judith Regan settles suit with News Corp.
Judith Regan may have published a book with a dull last chapter. It doesn’t make for good reading, but it would seem worth her while.
Regan’s sensation-filled lawsuit against News Corp. and HarperCollins has been settled for an undisclosed amount, Regan and her adversaries announced Friday.
Both sides aren’t saying much, and lots of questions raised by the lawsuit, a document that read like a novel with a heroine (Regan) and quite a few villains, remain unanswered.
Regan, who had published hundreds of authors and made millions in the process, had sued the companies in November for $100 million. (Story continues below interactive map.)
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She had alleged that she had been wrongly terminated in December 2006. She also claimed that she had been made to seem anti-Semitic and that she had been forced to withhold information about Rudy Giuliani that might damage his presidential campaign.When the lawsuit was filed, a News Corp. spokesman dismissed Regan’s claims as “preposterous.”
On Friday, News Corp. issued what amounted to an apology.
“After carefully considering the matter, we accept Ms. Regan’s position that she did not say anything that was anti-Semitic in nature, and further believe that Ms. Regan is not anti-Semitic,” it said in a statement.
Regan, too, issued a statement.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with so many gifted people and am looking forward to my next venture,” she said.
And that was that. The other allegations in the lawsuit aren’t addressed.
No mention was made of the Regan’s claim that she was told not to disclose damaging information about Giuliani that she had learned while dating Bernard Kerik, a Giuliani associate and former New York City police commissioner who is now under indictment.
Unmentioned, too, is Regan’s charge that she was unfairly made the scapegoat for the bad publicity generated by her project with O.J. Simpson.
Regan had planned on publishing the former football’s star’s “hypothetical” account of how he would have murdered his wife if he had murdered his wife.
In the face of adverse publicity, HarperCollins canceled the publication. Regan alleged that the company had supported the project and then abandoned her when the going got tough.
“As a result of this corporate shirking of responsibility, false representations and defamation, Regan was unfairly attacked worldwide for her involvement in the O.J. project,” the lawsuit claimed. “She received death threats, hate mail and was shunned, humiliated and caused great harm.”
Other questions remain unanswered:
Did her bosses at HarperCollins neglect to take care of Regan’s office? It reportedly had no air conditioning in the summer and too much heat in the winter.
Did those same bosses fail to investigate “serious security breaches” which led to a light fixture crashing onto Regan’s desk?
Did those bosses do nothing when Regan complained that people within the company were attributing her rise in the company to sexual activities?
Followers of this real-life legal drama may never know.
One of her lawyers suggested to The Wall Street Journal that Regan doesn’t want to look back.
“It is better for her to get on with her life,” said Bert Fields.
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Forget news, is McClatchy a real estate play?
Shares of McClatchy stock hit their lowest price in a couple decades Friday, reducing the market cap of the nation’s third largest publisher of newspapers to about $900 million.
That’s a stop-the-presses number. Ten years ago, McClatchy paid one and a half times that amount for just one newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which it is has since sold.
McClatchy’s stock price fell more than 70 percent in 2007. If the trend continues, it won’t be long before one of the company’s dominant assets will be the land and buildings it owns in fast-growing urban areas like Sacramento, Miami, Charlotte, Kansas City and Fort Worth.
Investors may not value newspaper operations anymore, but there is a steady appetite for prime commercial real estate. And McClatchy, with 31 dailies in 29 markets, has some.
CEO Gary Pruitt isn’t ready to put on his Realtor’s jacket just yet. He told The Wall Street Journal in December: “I think the future is bright for newspapers.”
But in the news business these days, it’s always good to have a Plan B.
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#1. Obama 08 04.03.2008
If Kushner was so smart, why did he buy a newspaper when he could have started one from scratch? Why stick yourself with a teetering brand, when now is the time to invent one’s brand anew in this brave new world of new media, particularly if you have a billion bucks to cover early mistakes?
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